There are no words to describe the enormity of this morning’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, so I won’t even try. But if there any Hokie readers out there, please know that the thoughts and prayers of every Virginian are with the staff, students, parents and everyone else in the Virginia Tech community right now.
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I want to just sit and cry. Time to pray, love and grieve.
I HAVE been sitting and crying. It helps…but it still hurts.
Me too.
…time to pray, love and grieve …
and maybe rethink Virginia’s lax gun laws.
Anon: Just shut up for awhile. For a decent interval.
Bowden,
Truth hurts, doesn’t it.
See 1:21pm entry for proper guidance and good advice.
Gun control in Virginia is an extremely valid question at the moment. We just witnessed the worst gun massacre in the history of this country. That’s right, the worst. The shooter, who according to reports was so disturbed with delusions of violence that professors recommended counselling, was able to legally buy an automatic handgun used in the shooting. He bought the gun at a Roanoke gun shop. It is very easy in Virginia to buy handguns. How is this so? Are checks thorough enough? Can enough safety checks be provided without trampling Second Amendment rights?
Sorry, Bowden, but these are legitimate questions after the VT massacre. Who the hell are you, anyway, to decide the proper time for debate? Don’t you understand that radical right wing gun nuts have blood on their hands today? If they didn’t have so much influence in this state, some of the students and professors at VT might be alive today.
These isues are simply too big to be ignored now. And there will be a reckoning. It is long overdue.
James Taranto, author of the Wall Street Journal’s “OpinionJournal” electronic newsletter, has an interesting take on Virginia Tech and gun control. I’m not endorsing his view, merely posting it here to goad more commentary:
Predictably, opponents of Second Amendment rights seized opportunistically on the Virginia Tech massacre. “It is long overdue for us to take some common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur,” said a statement from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino got questions like this one in yesterday’s press briefing:
Columbine, Amish school shooting, now this, and a whole host of other gun issues brought into schools–that’s not including guns on the streets and in many urban areas and rural areas. Does [sic] there need to be some more restrictions? Does there need to be gun control in this country?
And of course the New York Times, while noted that “it is premature to draw too many lessons from this tragedy,” draws one anyway:
What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.
But there is another side to this argument. Longtime readers may recall the lead item in our Jan. 18, 2002, column, which concerned a shooting spree at another Virginia institution of higher learning, the Appalachian School of Law. The gunman, Peter Odighizuwa, killed three, and probably would have killed more but for another student’s gun:
Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, officials said.
“We saw the shooter, stopped at my vehicle and got out my handgun and started to approach Peter,” Tracy Bridges, who helped subdue the shooter with other students, said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. “At that time, Peter threw up his hands and threw his weapon down. Ted was the first person to have contact with Peter, and Peter hit him one time in the face, so there was a little bit of a struggle there.”
Appalachian is a private institution, Virginia Tech a public one; and Virginia law prohibits guns on campus. Early last year there was an effort in the state Legislature to change that law, but it died in committee. As the Roanoke Times reported at the time:
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
There are reasons one may be wary of arming academia. College students spend a lot of time drinking and carousing, and so perhaps they’re better off without firearms. Academic disputes can get vicious; we wouldn’t want them to get bloody. But it does not seem a stretch to think that if Cho Seung-hui had encountered someone else with a gun, fewer people would lie dead at Virginia Tech.
Jim Bacon’s posting of the Journal commentary raises an interesting gun control issue — that arming more citizens makes for a safer society.
Not sure it holds water. This is purely anecdotal but I first heard the argument that arming everyone makes for safer conditions back in West Virginia where I grew up and got my first gun at age 13. But if you look at statistics, West Virginia’s gunshot mortality rate has ALWAYS remained higher than the U.S. average, even though both tracked downwards in the last decade.
Plus, as Jim points out, it just isn’t right to have classrooms filled with pistol-packers. And a frat beer bust could easily become a frat beer blast.
I don’t think Virginia’s gun laws should be changed — the man had a warrant for his weapons – he didn’t do any wrong there. The thing he did do was make a rash, terrible decision. The school also made a poor decision in not locking down the school earlier, but time can’t be erased and we can’t wake up from this surreal nightmare. So please quit saying to “take a break” — you think the families of the fallen and injured students are going to “take a break?” They’ve lost a son or daughter that they love like no other person can love them. They aren’t going to just forget about what happened for one second. And the students at Virginia Tech will never forget what happened yesterday. Never. I know this because my brother was there, and for him to say that he was scared is a huge deal.
The issue is timing, not discussing the issues. There’ll be plenty of time for political bile. All things in time. Not now. Later.
Well, then,
James Atticus Bowden? You have your point of view and it is routinely a strong one. The winds are against you. When do you deem it “appropriate” to state your views?
To quote Al Gore, is this an “Inconvenient Truth.” If this sounds liberal and Democratic, it’s meant to, Bubba.
Thought you Long Gray Line types were a little tougher than this!
In reference to the Taranto article referenced by Jim
Bacon, consider that you can buy a gun in any city in the United States for any purpose by meeting the right person, at the right place, and the right time. Those who choose to commit senseless, violent crimes will find guns whether through the benefit of a legal acquisition process or not. To blame the acquisition of a gun on a state’s gun policies will most likely not prevent those who seek to do us harm from finding weapons.
Anon: I’d wait a week to bury the dead.
Maybe we should all make a point to reach out to the loners.
As the facts become more clear this is not so much a gun issue as it is a size issue.
As we supersize and disaggregate society we destroy the relationships that keep us safe.
Small is not just Beautiful, it is safer. From Jacobs Eyes on the Street to functional Dooryards and Clusters.
EMR
Jane Smiley on the Huffington Post:
“What I would like is for the gun-toting right wing to admit that there is a price we pay, that senseless accidental deaths and traumas are a national cost and that it’s not so clear that it’s worth it, but hey, we pay it anyway because so many guns are in the hands of so many people that there would never be any getting rid of them. I would like the right wing to admit that guns are not ‘good’ and that the right to bear arms is not an absolute virtue and that the deaths in the US caused by guns are at least as problematic, philosophically, as abortion. But I’m not holding my breath.”
Understanding there is a price to pay for decisions citizen make collectively is a very good idea.
The Autonomobiles that citizens must use to have access and mobility in the settlement patterns that they choosen kill more people each day in the US of A than all the mass school shootings of the last decade combined.
A lot of those who are killed are wonderful, promising, inspiring citizens who were just trying to get thorugh the day as best they could.
EMR
C-
Virginia Receives a “C-” on Laws Shielding Families From Gun Violence
Legislation Grade Comments
——————————————————————————–
Juvenile Possession Law B YES, must be 18 for handguns and assault weapons
Juvenile Sale/Transfer Law B YES, must be 18 for handguns, 12 for other firearms
Child Access Prevention Law C YES, under 14
Gun Safety Locks and Safer Design Standards F NONE
Allow Cities To Regulate Guns (Non-Preempt) F NO
Secondary “Private” Sales Background Checks F NO
Carrying Concealed Weapons Law F No police discretion, no training required, reciprocity
Extra Credit Demerits
——————————————————————————–
Defeated NRA proposal to allow loaded hidden guns in bars. One-handgun-per-month law. Prohibits lawsuits against gun industry, preempted local laws on guns in city buildings.
Links Grading Criteria
National Press Release
People. Please!
For the moment can we focus on helping the VICTIMS?
There will be time enough for the gun debate.
There will be time enough for politics.
There will be time enough for name calling.
There will NOT be enough time to think of our fellow human beings in their time of need!
As we have all been New Yorkers and New Orleaners in their hours of great tragedy and need, it is time that we are all Hokies.
Think of them, pray for them, light candles for them, be their light in whatever way you can!
Riverdale, IL
Dear Anon 12:09 a.m.
No, there is NOT enough time for debate, which must begin NOW.
Why wait for some phony waiting period? Are we supposed to wait for another Virginia Tech or Amish school or Columbine? Nothing ever seems to happen — nothing changes.
Virginians need to ask themselves how an obviously deranged young man managed to evade professional psychiatric help and buy deadly handguns legally.
Spare me your cheap piety, please, please.
This was the work of a deranged individual – and our world is full of them. If someone is bent on destroying many lives, there are others ways besides guns. They can load a truck full of fertilizer and blow up buildings; they can commander planes with nothing more than box cutters and slam them into buildings; they can release deadly gas into enclosed areas. Gun control is not the answer – vigliance and watchfulness is.
What is wrong is to use a tragedy as a weapon for one’s personal cause.
An evil person planned this attack
An evil person pulled the trigger
An evil person killed those 32 people
Tallywa,
You’re kidding right? All those things you listed are a lot harder to pull off than it is for a nut to buy a gun In Virginia. Evil or crazy will out, but we don’t have to make it easy for them to do so.
32 people were killed at my place of work Monday and I was lucky to be off campus. I used to be a live and let live about our peculiar gun culture—I don’t get it but I could live with it. I was wrong and I just became a single issue voter Monday.
And for those of you who’ve decided arming me and my students is the way to go you may be even further out of step than you know…
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReportEmail.aspx?g=67f00436-536c-405e-addb-ef09fdb57bd7
Lucinda Roy, Virginia Tech English Department, told Neal Conan on Talk of the Nation that the Virginia Tech shooter was a disturbed young man … and that she had tried to get him some help to no avail.
“I just felt that he was a very depressed youth and seemed to be angry about some things and so I felt that there was some things I needed to do … because that’s what you’re meant to do as a teacher …”
“I contacted the police, contacted counseling, student affairs, the college to try to sound the alarm, and they felt that their hands were tied legally for various reasons … as you probably know until someone actually threatens to do something, it can be incredibly difficult to make something happen …”
We’ve heard this all too many times before – one Virginia mother asked “what do I have to do, have him kill someone to get him treatment?” shortly before her son killed her. We’ve been sounding the alarm that Virginia’s law, which is one of the most restrictive in the nation, needs to be reformed. Perhaps someone will now listen.
Wake up!, your violence filled TV and movies combined with moronic gun laws desensitise your children. Your so called leaders use hypocritical christianity to disguise a morally bankrupt society hellbent on nothing but the mighty dollar, supporing invidualism to the exclusion of any sense of community. Devide and rule.
Perhaps all American’s should be given automatic weapons by the goverment, because as every god fearing american knows, you all have the right to bear arms. Then maybe you can all shoot each other and leave the rest of the world to live in peace.
Google
9/11 was an inside job
virginia school shooting government black op?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/160407blackop.htm
It is well documented that disturbing questions remain over the incident at Columbine. It is clear that authorities had prior knowledge of what was going to happen. Observers were in the area hours before the shooting took place. Articles from the Associated Press stated that ballistics from Columbine show that six of the thirteen victims were possibly shot and killed by Jefferson County SWAT.
9/11 was an inside job
this was a psy op – to induce fear and panic
OKC 9/11 amish school killings katrina vt shootings – NO ONE WILL STOP THEM – WAKE UP AMERICA!!
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