http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3045574&page=1

I didn't know about it until glancing at the wow forums, and now I'm watching the live news feed off of the ABCnews site. I'm curious about how everyone feels about this. To anyone who may have lost a loved one, my condolences in advance.


...I personally, will have to wait it out a bit to decide how I feel about it, and how the country is going to react to it.

It is just as much a tragedy as it would be with any other death in large numbers. My heart does bleed for the families and friends thought not so openly. We live in a very cold, screwed up world. In any existence where the desire or will to take the life of another being exists just never struck me as right... But then again, that's the world we live in. All you can do is survive. Keep living and move on.

Holy Crap.

It's tragic, and I regret the senseless loss of life, but what I'm wondering about most now is which of the big three (firearms, video games, music) are going to be blamed for this instead of the fact that this was a seriously screwed up individual.

Spyder- 32...last I knew about 12:30 or so it was 20... So many people. Does anyone know what happened? Why the shooter go frellin berserk?

32. I just heard it on the news.

As for who will get blamed, everyone but the individuals with the gun who did the killings. This country is not about taking personal responsibility and rectifying the situation by preventing it from occuring again but of but placing blame.

I still remember when Columbine occurred. Myself and every other schmuck who liked dressing in black received crap from people.

So far, what I have gathered from the live feed is that the shooter entered a dormitory earlier this morning around 7:15, killed one and injured another, and then dissapeared. Approximately two hours later, the shooter entered a school classroom and began firing, killing more. Total confirmed right now is 32. I'm now listening to the press briefing that's happening.

Spyder- Yeah, I've got CNN on. Not sure I would have continued business as usual after the first shooting, but I wasn't there.

I'm gathering that an e-mail was sent out to all of the student(who provided e-mails) but that at the time, the school administration did not see fit to evactuate and close down. The impression was given to law enforcement agencies and to the administration that the shooter had left the school campus after the first shooting. Regardless.... I foresee jobs flying out the window. *shrugs*

Well if there was a shooter I would have had everyone get out if the shooter had left or not.

A couple sites of interest regarding this incident:

Virginia Tech's Website

*Possible* copies of the e-mails sent to the students


I'll update this particular reply as I come across more.

This is actually the first I heard about it. I am at home and do not have the TV on. What a shock... I will keep Virgina Tech in my prayers.

Spyder- I'd have to agree. Caution never hurts. Inconveinance kind of flies out the window in the face of the tragedy we're seeing now.

Well the email says to stay away from windows, what kind of advice is that... Its like telling an adult to not stick his/her keys in the electrical sockets.

Listening to the streaming video from ABC, I can already hear the rabid crys of gun control activists. I believe that while some gun control is good, we should not have to much nor have our right to bear arms revoked. I know this was a tragedy, but why must it be used as a rallying point to destroy others rights?

well having automatic firearms is fucking pointless and stupid. People should only need firearms for hunting.

I agree that automatic and assault class weapons should be regulated, but fire arms are for more then hunting. They are for personal protection as well.

But I do not want this to turn into an argument about gun control, i was angry and frustrated when I made my original post and probably should not have. I hope that people will learn from this, mostly that the human capacity for violence is extreme and that better security is the best protection. If a duty officer had been near he may have been able to stop this. But for now I just pray for those who lost loved ones.

No worries, I'm pissed too, and as far as gun control goes I'm not going to post my thoughts on it since Canada has different regs and I don't feel like frothing at the mouth. I just can't understand what would drive someone to take a life let alone 33 for any reason.

Personally? Demons. I am dead serious. I believe the devil is out to get you and that demons (and angels too) are very real.

Everyone knows that when a panic breaks out rational thought is thrown out the window and its everyone for themselves the chance at any of those kids having a reasonable train of thought was very slim, 2 kids jumped out th top story window, one broke his ankle and the girl that followed him wasn't much better.

WTF, im just getting off school and am just now hearing about this? Whats more, how fucked up are officials and the college itself for not going into lock-down and performing a school wide search after the first shooting. Im mean, come the fuck on people. "Well, we think he left campus even though we have nothing to really suggest this and so go to class and we will announce the tragedy later." I mean wake the fuck up you stupid wankers. You deserve to be taken out and quartered for not doing your fucking job and providing an environment that is safe. I hope you have a good fucking sleep to night knowing its your fucking fault all of those people died.

Seriously i am so steamed off right now that i feel like marching up to every last one of them whos bright idea it was to believe that everything would be peachy if they continued to do business as usual and told them all to go to hell. That and a stiff kick to the nuts. Stupid fucking pricks.

You know, I've started and re-started a reply to this topic like 6 times in my head already. I don't really have the words to say what is in my heart. All I can really say for sure is that this kid's actions make me feel a shapeless, substanceless rage at the world at large.

There are precious few things that I hate in this world. Life is an indescribably beautiful thing, regardless of your own personal misfotunes, that should be nurtured and allowed to grow without fear.

So, the clearest possible way that I can say this is that I absolutely fucking hate anyone who's actions make other people live in fear. To take away from the quality of someone elses life in such an insidious manner, to scar them so deeply......it's a sin that I would never really forgive, despite whatever pain you may feel.

This is not the way to fix the world.

This only leads others to feel the pain you've felt, and when you take a course of action that brings this about, how can you claim to be any different from those who've hurt you? When you torture another for your own pain, to try and bring the world itself to your level, all you do is validate the actions that others have taken against you.

I just....fuck it. I'm not going to go into it more than that. I'm angry enough already.

But, I do what to say that I also despise guns. I don't care what you feel you need for self-defense, or hunting. I wish they had never been invented, truth be told. With a gun, you can simply point a piece of metal at someone and pull a trigger, and there goes a human life. And don't tell me you need training to be truly deadly with a gun. Of course having training will make you more lethal with just about anything. But untrained shmucks kill others with firearms nearly every day. The simple fact of the matter is that a gun makes killing someone else easier, and that is never a good thing. Taking a human life should be as difficult an action as we can possibly make it. If you are so committed to a course or emotion that you feel the need to take someone's life, be a big enough person to look them in the eyes when you do it. Be a big enough person to see their pain, their confusion, their disbelief. Breath in the fragrance of their death. If you have to take someone elses life, I want you to remember it till the day you die. Killing should *never* be easy.

Heard from an instructor that the perp turned the gun on himself after it was all done. Sad, really...

Spyder- Heard this morning the shooter was a Asian student on a student visa. I wonder why he snapped?

Edit- they just confirmed that the shooter was responsible for both events.
Correction: Resident Visa, not student visa. He did it seems chain and padlock the doors shut. He really seems to have thought about this beforehand.

Here's the thing. This is not the fault of firearms. This is not the fault of Grand Theft Auto, this is not the fault of whatever music he happened to listen to. This is the fault of a deeply disturbed, mentally unstable individual, who decided to take out his rage/whatever on a group of his fellow students. I don't want to get into a firearms debate here, because A) I'd at least like to wait until the victims are in the ground before we start arguing over whose fault this was, and B ) this is one of those arguments that never leads to anything constructive, because the viewpoints are so diametrically opposed that neither side is ever going to convince the other that they're wrong. Instead, I will simply pray that the families have the strength to get throguh this, and for those whose lives were taken by the actions of this madman.

It's true, people will look to blame anyone but who did the shooting, becuase well, he's dead, there's no where to put their anger. It's so incredibly sad, I go to school in VA, my friends have family, boyfriends at VTech.
What I fear though is that this will once again become a race issue. The shooter was a resident of South Korea. I'm terrified this will fuel the xenophobia that so many people have in this country. I'm waiting to hear things about stricter immigration laws, stricter gun laws, everything but to realize that a man killed theese people, not a gun, and that overall a man, it doesn't matter where he was from, he was a human who killed other people.
I don't know if there is a solution for this. Except for compassion. Hates solves nothing, nor does anger. The hate I see, what people say and do to people who are different from them, they scare me. This is so much bigger than just VTech, this is something thats happenening everyday. People are forgetting that the person acorss from them, the person on the otherside of the ocean, on the other side of the border is just that, a person. I think the whole world needs to learn a lesson in compassion. It's the only thing that can stop what has been happening. To realize that overall humanity is what is important, that we are one human race, once you realize the humanity of everyone around you hate is impossible. Theese are the musings of an idealist however, I don't know if people will ever realize the beauty and potential of the human race united.

People can rarely see beyond themselves. In such situations that arise where much hurt befalls them, the human instinct is defense. Once in this mode of defense, It's difficult to retreat from it. People suffering from tragedy are very prone to suspicion and paranoia. It wounds their trust in humanity in general, which gives free reign to anarchy. It's human nature in such situations, but in such scenarios man should try to rise above the common Man, and live above the standard. However, we are only human.

Let's just try not to be like the rest of the humans.

Well, how many hundreds, thousands of people go to that school? 32 non-offenders and the killer himself (for a grand total of thirty three (33)) isn't much at all. I'm sure that, to the families of the deceased, this is a deep and personal tragedy. This isn't, however, a loss of life in large numbers.


Well, caution can (and has, many times, has) hurt. That aside, I do know I'd be annoyed if I got sent home because there had been a shooting and everyone believed the shooter to have left the area.

Keep in mind that this is not an unreasonable assumption to make. Few people who do shoot a bunch of people stick around to do it again later.


There are no rights. There is nothing about human experience that can't be taken from you, warped or destroyed. Your life, your ideas, your very ability to think.

No, we have privelages. Never rights. We're not entitled to anything.

It's okay, you can trust me. I'm a social contractualist. I do believe in enforcing rights. You just need to be aware that your "rights" are arbitrary and changeable things. You proudly bear Amendments (read: changes) to your Constitution, which supposedly lists all your rights and freedoms.


I'm pretty sure that the people who need to hunt are too poor for guns.


I concur. This sort of thing almost never happens in a police state.

Please note, I am not making an ironic joke. If I was in control of a country, it would be a brutal and indifferent police state. I wouldn't be having with this sort of thing.


But rabies is fun!


I hate this view. Deeply.

Not on religious grounds, on the grounds that I'm a human. By claiming that my behaviour is controlled by angels or demons (or even deeply influenced by same), you deny me my right to be truly great. All my darkest sins and all my brightest glories aren't my doing, but somebody elses.


Killing is always easy. We just try (as a species) to pretend it's not. We kill with guns, we kill with bows, we kill with swords, we kill with sticks, we kill with our hands.

It's not that hard to kill. It's just problematic for a society to allow it is all.


Because he's Asian, duh.

Also, he can't have thought about it too much. Whole thing took maybe two hours and all he can do is 32? Lack of planning.


1) That is, basically, 99% of the population on every issue. Arguing is fun. 2) Why is that point cool- or deserving of sunglasses-smiley?

Spyder- Verby, when you come back you come back with a vengence...As to the planning, I refer to the two guns, extra clips, bullet-proof vest, and the chaining of the doors to prevent escape. I'd say he gave it at least some thought before he started.

Please note that the section of my post detailing my views on the subject of firearms was not in any way an attempt to shift the blame from the shooter. It is very much his fault, and I in no way condone his actions.

That being said, I still disagree with the very concept of firearms. Say all you want about guns, but you cannot deny the fact that they make it *easier* to kill something. That is their point. I disagree with pretty much any form of weaponry, though I will admit that weapons do help us survive.

Anyways, the point was simply that I have a fundamental problem with any tool that is designed exclusively to kill something. Unless, of course, killing that something helps the ecosystem as a whole survive, but that is a discussion for another thread.

Angels and Demons do not control our lives. That is the view of someone who believes in predestination (which I dont). They do however influence our lives. There is very real danger from the spiritual realm, but most people dont ever realize its there.

And what of the hundreds and thousands of people who have died not all at once? What of other students that have been killed in schools? What of their families?

This story gets coverage because it bleeds a lot. When you have death all at once, it gets attention. It doesn't make the loss of life any more or less important. I just don't see the point of providing more coverage. Mourn. Survive. Move on. There is enough death in this world. People should be celebrating life instead.

Spyder- Just yesterday my husband and I were discussing this. Especially in the face of the anticipated talk about tighter gun laws and changing the entertainment industry....though the mental health reforms was a surprise. My husband is the sort that would say "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand" I'm not so big on guns. Playing the devil's advocate, I did bring up that having a gun made it easier to kill so many. As others have mentioned here, people find ways to kill each other, guns are just one more tool to that end. But then it occured to me, considering that this guy thought this out, he could have just as easily set up homemade bombs made out of perfectly legal household chemicals. Who knows how many he could have got then? I suppose the point of all this rambling is that no truer statement has been made than "People kill people, *insert weapon of choice here* don't kill people" Banning any and all weapons sounds well and good, but it doesn't solve the problem. Which, of course, is the people.

It's not. But when you put B followed by a right parenthesis, The board apparently automatically translates it into that emoticon. And since I didn't take the time or effort to review the post after making it, the smiley stayed in.

From what I know (I live about an hour or so from VT, had friends who went there, all of them are alright thankfully.) The shooter was a asian student who was here on a student visa (said early in the thread).

from what Ive seen on the news reports, aparently the student had a bad break up with his GF, or she was cheating on him or something or another, he shot her, then another student who was nearby checking out what him and his GF were screaming about came by, saw him shoot her, so he shot him.

Then he basically (who knows how) dissapeared and then reapeared at the other side of the school, jumped into an Engineerign Department class, chained the doors, and began to go postal on the people inside. Alot of students who were interviewed actually said they played dead so he wouldn't shoot them again (really smart idea if you ask me).




Thats just what I know, we all know how News casts can be and they sometimes "stretch" the truth.

From what I have read, he apparently resented rich people and had violent tenancies, but nothing so serious as to make people suspect just how dangerous he really was.

I am not nearly articulate enough to fully express my deepest sympathies for those who have lost.

Moreso, I wonder how the shooter's family is dealing with this. Not only are they dealing with the death of their brother/son/nephew, they have to forever live with the stigma that it was THEIR relative who so coldly massacred innocent college students. If I were in their shoes, it'd be unbearable to have to look around everywhere and see the dirty glares of those affected. All the time, you'd think everyone was saying, "That's the one who raised a murderer".

Well the way I see it is that everyone related to all 33 people are going to have some rough times ahead, for 32 families they will be asking why their children and one will be asking how their son went so wrong. I don't actually hate the boy, I pity him for not being able to deal the hand life gave him. It is a very sad ordeal and it is only going to get worse then people start to blame the usual mediums of video games, music, and movies. I know Jack Thompson has started on games.

On the news tonight they played a video the guy sent to NBC in the middle of the shootings. And I hate to say it but while he was saying stuff like "You have forced me to do this, I could have ran, I could have fled, but I will run no more," my deepest, darkest urge was to shoot him myself. Too bad I didnt see the videos one day before he did this. Maybe Ill blow up his grave.

Just my two cents. I feel like I should be more calm and condoning but I cant be. Sorry.

Well, I wasn't going to talk about it, because I would probably merely enrage people, and wouldn't make anyone stop and actually think, or make it "better" for anyone. But then I thought, "You know what? What the hell do *I* care, if what I say upsets people? They can just go away and stop reading... and I WANT to say something". So here goes...

About the events Tuesday at Virginia Tech. You know what? I was not horrified. I was not shocked or surprised. And, to a large extent, I don't care. I just do not care. The thoughts that went through my head? "Huh. 32? Damn, that's better than most get." Because, to be honest, the only thing this incident did was confirm and reaffirm my "faith" in humanity. It merely shows me once again, as if I needed additional proof, that I am not off base in my general feelings on the basic nature or impulsive drives of people. It was no more or less than what I expect from people. So I may sigh into my drink, mildly shake my head, and with a slight resigned-to-what-will-be grin on my face quaff the cup of the mild poison I voluntarily ingest on a semi-regular basis to deaden my views on humanity and the way the world-in-general works, but it is not because I am actually upset. I have merely had my opinions borne out, and am wryly and regretfully "celebrating" the fact that I was (inevitably) correct.

Because the worst part of all is, I am not a pessimist. I am a realistic optimist. When you take into account the fact that the basic building blocks of human nature (loneliness, anxiety, panic, stress, anger, jealousy, angst, etc.), as well as the less-common materials some people manage to build up part of themselves upon ("love", sacrifice, joy, friendship, etc.), are all just different "flavors" of the one, single, ONLY true emotion humans have at the cores of their beings, the one emotion that, if you look deep enough into any act, feeling, impulse, or thought any human being has you will find as the basic seed from which it sprung; namely, selfishness; you then must realize the rather depressive truth that things are going as well as is possible in the world today, and that the mere idea that humans are even CAPABLE of producing anything "better" than the current state is a ludicrous pipe-dream.

Actually, the state of things couldn't get much worse, either; humans are ONE way, as a whole, and thus the world can only advance in ONE direction, and be in ONE state, which could be easily predicted by anyone with the most simple grasp of human nature. We are as we are, and no matter how much one might long for a different truth, there it is. One can rail against it, accept it, or even opt out of it if one has the will to do so. But one cannot change it. This is who we are, this is what we do, this is WHAT WE ARE.

We are sensationalistic media greedily sucking down and spewing out for mass consumption the misery of others.

We are dull-eyed masses listlessly staring at boxes full of flashing lights, mindlessly waiting for the brief, giddily shocking entertainment gleaned from horrors visited upon others at a safe distance from ourselves.

We are politicians and officials, making absolutely certain to let our populace know how "much" the event "means" to us, how we are all solidly united behind the "victims" of the "tragedy", and that we "care" for these people we never knew, couldn't care less about if we tried, and wouldn't spit on if they were on fire. And that we are up for re-election next June, but look at how much we "care", we even wore matching outfits.

We are a populace striving to find a way to turn an event which legitimately destroys the lives of others into attention for ourselves, who make sure many others are around when we speak of how "torn up" we are over the event which not only had nothing to do with us and did not directly or indirectly affect either ourselves or anyone we know, but which happened half a continent away and would not have even entered our consciousness but for our first selves mentioned above.

We are those at the location of the event, trying afterwards to make it work for us in some way, taking advantage to skip classes and assignments, and gaining vicarious sympathy for having "survived" this, basking in the attention we have received through this "tragedy" by claiming to have been close to some one of the minuscule portion of the huge campus population who was actually killed or injured, although the vast majority of us had probably never once met, talked to, or even noticed any one of these individuals, never known they existed before a few days ago.

We are the family of one young man, who are turning our backs on one of our own, denouncing and denying him, stating there were "signs" we had noticed, that he was "quiet", that we should have gotten him "help", as well as any other buzzwords we can think of to protect ourselves from rabid masses of reactionary idiots, who only think of 32 grieving families and lost loved ones.

We are 33 dead at a university in Virginia.

And no one truly cares.

Yours,
-Me

Spyder- Yes, Khay, 33 dead... I don't know if you want people to argue with you or what, but, after reading your post, you did succeed in making my heart fall. Not anger, but immense sadness rises in me reading your point of view, which so closely matches my husband's. Why seek anything better since people so often fail? Why try to change the world for the better, it will never happen.... Nothing will change for people who won't try. I might fail, but I rather fail trying than fail by default. No, I don't hate what you say or feel anger by your words, Khay. All I can do is try.

I like to make an entrance.

That's impulse planning, though. It's like when you're at the cash register, you realise you really did need some chewing gum.


No object has purpose. We imbue objects with purpose.

The creator of piano wire intended it to be a musical instrument. People who use it for the funny crime of murder imbue the item with a different purpose. It becomes a weapon. If you take people away from the equation, it is simply an object. Religious texts are often designed to guide and teach love. People imbue them with a hateful message.

The item and the design have no bearing on how it's used. It's all how you imbue things.


Well, now I feel obliged to ask how you're so sure you're listening to the right side.

I prefer to stick to my own counsel, myself.


"Verbose can get a little smutty."

A truer sentence.

Also, yes, people are the problem, Bob Loblaw, see above and below.


Ah, I see. So my error was in joking. I'll make sure not to do it again.


They would be.


We are melodramatic and derive pleasure from a disempowering world view.

We are pointlessly mocking the pessimism of others.

We are referring to ourselves as a collective.

We are very bored.


To try and fail is more noble than to have never tried and thus doom thyself to failure.

Or some noise like that.

Surprisingly, I agree with verbose on every account. Yes, V-Tech was a tragedy. Yes, it's horible.

But i's only one out of many tragedies. While the western world wept at the 33 dead students, how many more somalians died and went unnoticed? How many Talibans blew themselves and their innocent victims? How many wars kept being waged in the name of some divinity or in the name of justice?

If you have a chance, grab a copy of Our Lady Peace's most recent album "Healthy in paranoid times" and read the Album cover. There are currently over 30 wars in the world. Can you name more than 2?

G!

This isn't the first time I've heard about it, but I did have friends going to VT who emailed me about it.

My hopes and prayers go out to the families of those who were lost because of reckless violence...

~Kurama

Truth be told, 33 people die in the US every day (easily) from car accidents. But its not news so no one cares.

True. Just last week we had a two-day event called "Every 15 minutes" where the administrators would take a student out of class and "kill them off" (make them look like a zombie and they can't communicate with anyone for the whole time). The idea was to emphasize that one person in America is killed or severely injured in a drunk-driving related incident.

The funny thing is, they tried to stage a car accident where someone flew out a window perpendicular to the force of the hit. It was fun completely insulting whoever wasted their time and effort.

However, the thing that pissed me off (and makes this post relevant to the current topic) is that it makes Americans look so damn SELFISH! Mind you, I have Noble Savage Syndrome, so I don't hesitate to point out the imperfections of my culture too frequently.

They're not even focusing exclusively on death, and for every one person that dies or is severly injured in a drunk-driving related incedent, 1000 children die of starvation in that same time span. Not insluding diseases, and not inclusing adolescents and adults.

Now again, I won't say that the events at VA-Tech were anything short of a tradgedy. I'm sure this DID hit close to home, as we don't tend to deal with these issues like many other countries might. BUT I think the U.S. gets cocky in that we tend to be a very self-centered country, and incresingly negligent of our international relationships and concern.

I know. I'm scared too, kids.


Yeah, I had that a few years back. Course of penicillan cleared it right up.

To be honest, I prefer the Realistic Savage who has as brutal and pointless a culture as our own but much less efficient.