PeterDavid.net

As I did with the Amish school shootings that happened around my area, my first reaction was, "Didn't anyone, SOMEONE, know what was going on inside this kid to try and reach him??"

Now it's coming out that, in this case, many did, and tried- but he was unwilling to connect.

SO is there any hope for these kids who feel so isolated? Do you feel that, in addition to the possible abuse- which I tend to believe happened as well- that society as whole becoming less and less of a community bares any fault too?? How do we change that? Can it be changed??

Just some things I've been thinking about...

It so happens I was spinning my Harry Chapin box set Story Of A Life last week in the days prior to this incident and one of my favorite songs on that set has always been "Sniper" for the story, scope, and the varying viewpoints from which it is told, including the sniper himself, acquaintances, and "news reports." The lyrics alone don't do the 10-minute song justice, imo.

I'm not saying it's the same thing, of course (it's an old song obviously), but there are certain eerie resonances, I think.

Yeah, imagine way back in the late seventies if the publishers had tagged THIS persons novel and considered him a bit 'off his nut' and hauled him in for questioning....

title? THE LONG WALK
plot? a group of young men meet annually (yes, ANNUALLY) and walk a certain distance. They MUST keep to a certain pace and they MUST at all costs keep walking. If they stop or lag behind a group of military sharpshooters will take them out one by one. Oh its not quite thAT BARBARIC....they get three warnings before they get shot dead.

Pretty grim eh?

Well for those of you who arent aware---
THE LONG WALK is a very real book.
The author?Stephen King under the name
Richard Bachman

From what they've excperted from the texts of the Virginia shooters writings, those seem somewhat tame compared to the Long Walk. And yet, King has not turned out to be a crazed man.

And yet Peter is correct that many student's writings will be scrutinized now because of this.

Hmm, thought I knew how to do links, but obviously not, so here are the links as I intended them in my post above...

Harry Chapin's "Story Of A Life" box set:
http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=75875

"Sniper" lyric:
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Sniper-lyrics-Harry-Chapin/43ED51ADE719915748256CAA002CD045

I thought too, "Now how disturbing can his writing possibly be when the likes of Saw3 is out there already?"- but I suppose it was his behavior that sealed it for them ...

1, 3 and 4 seem likely, yes. (1) will and in my mind should go through, since "armed murderer walking around campus" strikes me as something a college might want to react to. (4) will, of course, make me want to throw up.

2 seems a bit of a stretch. Well, yes, someone may TRY and sue the shooter's parents, but I can't imagine such a case getting past the initial filing.

(5) happens to an extent already. My parents are both high school teachers and mechanisms for that sort of thing are in place, although they (like Tech) send students who submit "worrying" material to a psychiatric professional. Frankly, suspending/expelling a student in a situation like that is actually counterproductive, since engagement is what is required.

Frequent reader, first time poster here.

Zeek: That is exactly what I'm hoping folks remember... that disturbing behavior is what's worth taking seriously.

A friend of mine -- a pleasant, socially well-adjusted college guy who was in marching band and partied possibly too hard with his friends -- had to go through psych eval for a story he wrote for a creative writing class, wherein a gunman hunted from inside an animatronic attraction at Disneyland. It was more black humor and social commentary than horror, but his professor over-reacted... and this was in the pre-Columbine years, even.

Fiction isn't real life anymore than video games are. (Has anyone blamed GTA for this shooting spree yet, I wonder?) As Peter predicted, though, I think we'll be seeing precious little distinction being made between what people write and how they act. Genre writing's uphill battle to be taken seriously in college writing courses just got a whole lot worse.

Zeek, it's not that people tried and the student was unwilling to connect - this guy was hauled away for observation at one point - but it is a total, total breakdown of the mental health system in this country. If you think we have one, we don't. This guy was observed and let go. I know of one person who, after one suicide attempt, tried two methods the second time, and was still sent home that evening under her own authority - not even a 72 hour hold. When my own foster son had a panic attack and hyperventilated himself into a seizure, his doctor refused to treat him because it was a psychiatric issue, and though we searched for TWELVE months, no psychiatrist would treat him because he had state aid insurance - unless we wanted to wait in the welfare line, and then they could see him in 3 months (forget about crisis need). In CT several years ago, a mental patient on a day pass knifed a 9 year old girl to death at a street fair. Even John Hinckley is allowed home overnight without supervision. You can be the most frightening, violent person on record, but when your insurance says you've reached your limit, out the door you go. Medicine is an industry, and the days about caring and actual treatment are long gone. I won't discuss patient dumping (LA is famous for that). You can talk about weapon violence and loopholes all you want, but until we're willing to make psych evaluations easier to come by, and make a commitment to keep the dangerous, demented, and predatorious locked up (besides Manson, who seems to be the only person who can be legally locked up for insanity), this will continue to happen.

Peter, you forgot a couple of items of what will happen over the next month.

6)Politicians of every stripe will try to use this for (campaign purposes, whether they're running for something now or later.

7)Mass Media will be Pilloried, Movies, Tv, Video games, comics, music, all will be mentioned as "enablers" even if the young man in question did not partake from such media.

Charles F. Waldo

I can easily see any of Peter's 5 items happening, but it's the fifth one that I find the most disturbing. When I write my stuff, be it my comics, my novels, or my screenplay, some pretty nasty stuff happens in the stories. I've been writing most of it since high school. My teachers read some of it, and praised me for what I came up with. It's hard to write military adventure without violence and really nasty villains. Now, if I showed them some of it today, would I be labeled as creative or as a potential gunman? Heck, my five year old comes up with some violent stuff with his action figures or when he role plays on the playground. Is he going to be labeled? What we all have to try to avoid is the overcompensation because of this. I'll be the first one to say in a situation that Story X might be a sign of something, but unless Supporting Factor Y and Behavior Z is also present, maybe it's like Freud's cigar. But, if the reports I've heard are right, and this guy in Virginia was in and out of mental programs, why was he allowed to buy weapons?

One last thing. Students at VT have said they tried to reach out to this guy. Others said that if something were to happen, they could see Cho being involved. Is there anything that they could've done, legally, to have this guy investigated or watched or whatever? One of my novels that I'm working on has a rich kid who has killed one girl and is trying to kill another because his parents always fixed everything and made all his bad deeds disappear. Is this a case like that?

And of course the commentators on television who will use this to political advantage. Olbermann's already shown his ignorance, claiming that the "clip" used was previously illegal until "Congress and President Bush" let the renewal of the ban lapse. (The ban was on manufacture of the magazines, not the sale or ownership.)

I expected Rosie O to draw a comparison to how this kind of slaughter happens daily in Iraq, but I missed the mark on that one -- she compared it to Katrina instead.

But the real scumsuckers are the people mentioned in this Wired article, who immediately registered web domains named after the tragedy, then turned them around on eBay while the blood was still slick in the dorms. :{

Kath's remembrance of Jamie on her blog was just lovely. I haven't gone over to his site yet, I think it'd be too painful. Those of us who've been touched a bit too much by death so far this year need to put emotional shields around ourselves sometimes.

Sherry M.
Fiction isn't real life anymore than video games are. (Has anyone blamed GTA for this shooting spree yet, I wonder?)

Within hours of the shooting, Jack Thompson (he of the "GTA is responsible for my aunt's gout!" mentality) was on FOX (no surprise there) blaming videogames.

"SO is there any hope for these kids who feel so isolated? Do you feel that, in addition to the possible abuse- which I tend to believe happened as well- that society as whole becoming less and less of a community bares any fault too?? How do we change that? Can it be changed??"

I think many people have nostalgia for a past that never really existed. Every decade, every age, spawned it's own horrors. It's also worth noting that integration into a community isn't by itself a positive thing. As many horrible things have been done by communities as by lone crazies.

Call me pessimistic, but sometimes I think that some tragedies would have happened no matter what. The more I read about this guy, the more I think helping him would have been a very difficult task.

His writings make it obvious that this guy was abused by a parent or another older person. Is there anything that can be done to stop something like this from happening? Short of subjeting all kids to periodic physical examinations, it's very hard to know what happens behind closed doors inside people's homes.

Yes, I feel for the families of this tragedy, their feelings of great outrage and loss. But I think it important to resist the first impulse, which is to level blame at someone - anyone - who may have stopped this, but didn't. I don't think that happened here. Sometimes, tragic though it is, there is nothing that can be done that wasn't done. Yet, what is it going to take for our kids to be safe? Do we run our nation's colleges like a prison and suspect every student as a potential shooter? Frisk down every traveller at our airports, right down to haveing them remove their shoes? Tap every cell phone conversation in case someone with emotional issues is planning a rampage? At what point do we sacrifice personal liberty for the protection of all? Where do we draw that line? I am in no way advocating this maniac's right to murder. Where is our pain assuaged enough, and where do we take a stand
before someone else get hurt? After all our outrage at what happened is abated, what we must do to prevent it again. I fear we may be on the road to cutting off the nose to spite our face.

I agree with a lot of the prior posts -- while people may TRY #2 on Peter's list, I hope they get laughed out of court.

And since someone mentioned Harry Chapin's "Sniper" (which I agree is very powerful, kinda like most of Chapin's stuff), I've been hearing Peter Gabriel's "Family Snapshot" in my head for the last day and a half or so. Anyone else getting echoes of that one? (The POV is slightly different, but certainly similar enough to be rather uncomfortable.)

TWL

I see it like this...

Imagine a society in which guns are forbidden. Nobody is allowed to own a gun.

Then, imagine a society in which the ownership of guns is mandatory. Everybody over a certain age is issued a handgun. EVERYBODY.

Which society will have more murders? Which society will have more accidental deaths? I think reasonable people would recognize that the first society would be safer, despite the fact that EVERYBODY could be armed in the second society.

If guns make everybody safer, then give everybody guns. If they don't, then take them away.

When I heard he wrote violent plays, I wondered if anyone was going to call the police about you and all the violence you write about in Spider-Man.

My other fear is that the more attn this kind of thing gets, the more it seems to be all the rage.

Suicide by cop.

I.E. "I'm hurting, i'm ending my horrible existance, and, because I'm pissed, I'm taking out as many as I can with me," knowing full well that if they can't end their lives by their own hand- the cop will!

As if to prove my fears- just days after this tragedy, we hear about more bomb threats being called into schools across the country- including V-Tech!!

Sometimes people are just fucked in the head. You can try all you want to fix them or ramble for years about what caused it, but it's the sad truth - sometimes there is no fixing someone. Sometimes there is no preventing a violent act.

Dear Kurt,

Your posting has got to be one of the most ignorant idiotic statements that I've ever read outside of Mother Jones magazine. You have no idea what you're talking about. This being the case, I thank Mr. David for allowing both of us to express our opinions.
With regards to all who find discussion during tragedy within a certain thread,I.E.-(HITTING HOME)and statements there, I'll say this. I've never heard of Michael Bishop or his son Christopher. If Mr. Bishop was one of the ones murdered, I hope he went down trying to tear that bastard's head off.

Robert Preston

"Imagine a society in which guns are forbidden. Nobody is allowed to own a gun."

The problem here is that you're dealing with extreme and theoretical situations. Many gun-ownership advocates would say that the government will always do a poor job of making sure illegal guns don't end up in the hands of muggers, while taking away the guns of law-abiding people who only want to protect their homes. 'Nobody is allowed to own a gun' is a fine sentiment, but will the government be able to make sure this is for real?

Also, many people would wonder if the government itself would still be allowed to have guns in your hypothetical society and whether it's a good thing that an armed government lords over totally unarmed citizens.

Please, note that I'm not saying I would necessarily make those arguments myself. I'm really on the fence on this gun thing. I am only saying that until we discover a way to make every gun on the planet magically disappear and make sure they'll never come back, there will be arguments made against 'no one is allowed to own guns' utopias.

Your posting has got to be one of the most ignorant idiotic statements that I've ever read outside of Mother Jones magazine. You have no idea what you're talking about. This being the case, I thank Mr. David for allowing both of us to express our opinions.

So, you feel compelled to top him, eh?

*sigh*

Your posting has got to be one of the most ignorant idiotic statements that I've ever read

This from the person who attempted to turn the condolences thread into a charnel house.

In the words of Wallace and Gromit (and it helps if you think of this as being said in an English middle-class housewife voice):

"Stop it! Stop it, Preston!"

TWL
not suffering cyberdogs gladly

I agree with PAD about his list, well, 2 and 3 are already playing out. The rest will follow, I'm sure.

I don't believe we'll ever have a gun-free society and I don't think it is practical in a real world context. Incidentally, Switzerland has one of the lowest murder rates and they have a law which requires every able-bodied man to own and maintain a fully automatic weapon as all men are considered part of their national militia. So, while guns make mass killings easier than say, a knife, I think there are larger societal issues that cause incidents like this.

From what I've read, the shooter had a lot of behavioral issues besides his violent writings that raised some red flags, but such warning signs always look clearer in hindsight.

What Den said.

Then, imagine a society in which the ownership of guns is mandatory. Everybody over a certain age is issued a handgun. EVERYBODY.

No need to imagine, Kurt. That society has a name. It's called "Todd McFarlane"... er... I mean... "Switzerland".

You might be surprised at their violent crime statistics.

Dear Mr. Tang, and Mr. Lynch,

I do not feel compelled to "top" anyone. Least of all Kurt or you, but statements like some posted here should go unchallenged. If that upsets anyone, that's their problem.
Rarely is my intention to offend anyone. If the "HITTING HOME" thread was intended as a memorial of sorts, then why was "DEN" given a pass when allowed to make his remarks? Probably because a lot of those who routinely read and post here agree with him. That's perfectly acceptable as long as the forum is open, but I have read some very hateful things posted on this site, and the posters are rarely taken to task for them. What I wrote doesn't even come close. The crimes at VT were the direct result of one sick individual, but everyone should learn something from it. Especially about themselves. In most instances, people can choose to not be a victim.
I do not live in a glass house. Throw all the stones you want.

All the best,

Robert Preston

Robert - so, you're saying that it's idiotic to believe a gun-free society would have fewer murders and accidental deaths than a society in which every adult can defend themselves with guns?

The only "statement" I made was that "reasonable people would recognize that the first society would be safer, despite the fact that EVERYBODY could be armed in the second society."

Good to know where you stand on this.

Rene - It's not problematic that I'm dealing with extreme, theoretical situations... that's how to find out if an idea works. If an idea works, it will also work in its extreme. If it doesn't work in the extreme, then it doesn't work.

Looking at a society in which it is much more difficult to obtain guns - Britain, for example, and even Canada - we have real examples of what can happen if gun control is applied to a greater level. Since we can agree that fewer guns equals fewer murders and deaths, then that should be enough, from my perspective.

And, also, to expand upon my idea ... the military gets to keep their guns. The police, only in extreme circumstances. Hey, it works elsewhere in the world, it can work here as well.

R.J. - in Switzerland, people aren't typically permitted to carry weapons in public. In my hypothetical, they are.

This is what I wrote in an email to myself just yesterday morning (I do that while I'm at work, as a sort of diary of the day.)

I'm just not looking forward to the hyper-analysis that the news media is going to be putting into this. The details are going to be gone over, the survivors interviewed about how they feel, the biography of the killer unearthed and in the end what will it change? People are
dead. Knowing The Big Why won't bring them back. The small why is simple--because they were shot by an asshole with a gun.

And I've been spot-on so far . . .

Mr. Preston,

If had avoided using the "most ignorant idiotic" part and also avoided sounding like a priest doing a sermon about someone else's opinion, there'll no reason for others answer as they did.

This whole guns / no guns issue is something that will go on and on... The fact is that Peter resumed pretty well what's going to happen next of this tragedy. I'm really sorry about all those people who died and I wish there was a more palpable solution for such thing doesn't happen again.

But, then again, what do I know?

-Maurício

Since I just read both threads pertaining to this story I thought I'd chime in.
Robert: You wrote "If the "HITTING HOME" thread was intended as a memorial of sorts, then why was "DEN" given a pass when allowed to make his remarks?"
While I agree that on a memorial/sympathies thread there should have been nothing but sympathy statements, rereading I see that he began his post "As for the kneejerk reaction" and ONLY criticized the
ignorant statements written by Debbie Schlussel. NO WHERE on his post was any critical remarks made about anyone involved in this tragedy.

You though wrote "As to the attack at VT, while my heart and prayers go out to all the families, the wounded, and all but one of the dead, I have to wonder how many of the people were killed trying to fight back. That is important." Is it? How so? That there were no Rambo's or Die Hard's among the students and the faculty? How many times sir have YOU been attacked? How many times has your life been threatened? Especially in a small room or locked campus?? How dare you attack these men and women who's lives were so wrongly taken away! They weren't trained soldiers. They weren't trained policemen. They were students and teachers.
And perhaps most importantly you weren't there. To state "I have to wonder how many of the people were killed trying to fight back. That is important.", - what were you implying sir?
Really, (to steal a quote) Have you no sense of decency?

I my guess as to the reason that Switzerland has such a low murder rate is that military training and service is mandatory. Discipline, a sense of duty as a citizen, and a healthy respect for the power of their weapon probably helps discourage most citizens from using their weapons for homicide.

Dear Kurt,

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Your hypothetical about making people feel safe has nothing to do with reality. Any reasonable, law-abiding person that wants to be armed should be allowed to arm themselves. With NO INTERFERENCE from the State. Period. Unfortunately, the polypragmatoi (busybodies)around the world, such as yourself, consider my business to be theirs. If guns scare you, don't learn how to use them. That's your choice. Don't try to limit my choices and I won't try to limit yours. Fair enough?

All the best,

Robert Preston

I didn't want to say anything but...

The situation right now does not favors discussions about the legal right of carrying guns or whatever is called. The whole point of this post is to say that people that advocates both sides will use something horrific as this situation to defend their point of view, when, instead they, as we, mourn the loss of so many lives. Let the political disscussion for a more adequated hour.

-Maurício

If anyone was offended by my comment about Debbie Schlussel, I apologize. I would, however, like to point out that I was not the first person in that thread to talk about people exploiting the issue for their pet issues. Several people were already talking about the Phelps family before I started posting, for example. But, while everyone there was trying to be respectful to each other because of the seriousness of the issue, Robert Preston decided to be disrespectful to both the victims and to me personally.

And, as I said before, I have no idea why it's important to know how many of the students fought back before they were shot. This was not a video game or a Rambo movies. It was not an opportunity for people who were not there to live out some kind of macho fantasy. It was real people who were facing an ambush from an armed assailant.

then why was "DEN" given a pass when allowed to make his remarks? Probably because a lot of those who routinely read and post here agree with him

This is the first and only time I will address this "question", because I do not truly think it is being asked honestly.

Den was not "given a pass". Den made an EVENHANDED statement saying that political idiots on both sides were already starting to exploit the tragedy, and gave an example. He was not given a pass because there was nothing he said that required one.

I have disagreed with Den on multiple occasions. I have disagreed with (for example) Bill Mulligan on multiples of multiple occasions. I have disagreed publicly with our host on occasion. Nobody is "given a pass" because of their opinions. We are listened to, or not, because as a rule we don't shit where we eat.

Believe me, I would have been every bit as condemnatory had someone popped in and claimed something like "Bush's gun control policies are the direct reason these dozens are dead." It's dumb, it's designed almost entirely to piss people off and do naught else, and it was neither the appropriate time nor (in that thread) the appropriate venue for such things.

Rarely is my intention to offend anyone.

Then with all due respect, you seriously need to work on your presentation skills.

If you are interested in civil discussion, then please try to ... what's the term ... oh, yeah. ACT CIVILLY. And that doesn't just mean "don't swear at the Queen."

Now, if you want to be constructive from here, that sounds good -- you're clearly intelligent and could probably add a lot to the discussion, and there are certainly others here who have recovered from inauspicious debuts. If you'd rather fling prettily wrapped poo, go right on ahead. I'll be a safe distance from the monkey house.

TWL

Your remarks about the ease in which he obtained the gun, I hope, will have a bit more impact this time around, but it likely won't. The media seems to rather delve into psychological issues (such as disturbed writings and the people who knew the gunman) instead of focusing on how easily this disturbed person was able to obtain an incredibly powerful firearm with a minimum of effort.

In the weeks following Columbine, I was finishing my journalism degree and I performed a media analysis on Columbine in that time. I found an article, buried in the back of the front section of the Washington Post in the weeks following, explaining that the guns chosen by the Columbine shooters were banned assault weapons. However, the manufacturer, in order to skirt the ban, took this banned weapon, made minor modifications to it, and changed the name of the model. Just as powerful, just as deadly, and now...legal.

"Imagine a society in which guns are forbidden. Nobody is allowed to own a gun.

Then, imagine a society in which the ownership of guns is mandatory. Everybody over a certain age is issued a handgun. EVERYBODY."

Which society will have more murders? Which society will have more accidental deaths?

The latter. Definitely. Without question.

PAD

Robert - I won't bother to argue with you. I'll leave you to your precious right to kill people.

In my reality, there is no greater commodity than human life. It's as simple as that, and the fact remains - if every American were constantly armed, there would be more shootings and deaths than if none of them were. If you don't want to accept that horrible reality, feel free to keep living in Kill'Em All Land.

However, the manufacturer, in order to skirt the ban, took this banned weapon, made minor modifications to it, and changed the name of the model. Just as powerful, just as deadly, and now...legal.

That was one of the major weaknesses in the assault weapons ban. For a variety of reasons, Congress could not come up with a workable definition of an assault weapon, so instead, they simply put together a list of specific makes and models. Several manufacturers got around the ban simply by changing the name of their products.

Rarely is my intention to offend anyone.

The word "bullshit" comes to mind . . .

Dear DEN and All,

At no time have I been disrespectful of anyone in this discussion. Again, if you take it that way, that's your problem. Believe me, folks, I take this problem very seriously. I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy, and reality, and the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact. After that, the choice is completely up to YOU. I have a 19 year old son just completing his freshman year, and I know that in the same situation as the kids at VT, he would be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive and save others.
That usually means killing the bad guy before he kills you or anyone else. Had the staff and students at VT been allowed, if not encouraged, to fight back, some of them might possibly have been saved. If that seems intemperate, so be it. The truth oftenasppears that way to some.

All the best,

Robert Preston

Dear PAD,

You're dead wrong sir. As Heinlein said,"An armed society is a polite society." Remember that. Literally, words to live by.

All the best,

Robert Preston

I was a student at UNC when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar went on a joy ride in a pedestrian commons with his SUV in a similar kind of situation. Fortunately, no one died. The only reason that wasn't a Virginia Tech-scale massacre was because the town of Chapel Hill had more restrictive gun purchasing laws -- Taheri-azar said he WANTED a gun, he just couldn't buy one.

Seriously. Can the pro-gun people just all go away now?

Dear PAD,

You're dead wrong sir. As Heinlein said,"An armed society is a polite society." Remember that. Literally, words to live by.

-
The right thing to say would be... words to die by.

Besides, you're polite because you're afraid someone will shoot you? Wow.. that's a nice society.

Robert Preston, with all due respect, your presentation of your ideas is condescending and arrogant. That's not our problem for taking things that way...it's yours, if you truly care at all about the way you come off. If not, no biggie. If you do, I'd suggest you check your attitude at the door like the rest of us try to do, and continue.

As to whether an all-armed society would be safer, I don't think that's as much fact as you seem to think it was. I know the Wild West period of America has been romaticized and overhyped by Hollywood, but I'll suggest that one fact from that period is that there were more instances of citizens shooting other citizens than they are today, per capita.

What an all-armed society would do, and I agree, is prevent events like what happened this week, or at Columbine, because regular folks would be able to call on a weapon to defend themselves. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to disagree with you there.

But in order for an all-armed society to truly have fewer weapon-related deaths than what we have today, we need for something more than just to hand out a firearm with everyone's 16th birthday. Because just handing someone a weapon doesn't make them a responsible, safe bearer of that weapon. We'd need to also make sure that every person bearing a weapon recieved proper training in the care and use of that weapon. And then we'd have to trust that training to stick.

Given our public schools' record for instilling permanent lessons, I don't have a lot of hope that such a system could pull that off. I took 4 years of advanced math in high school, and 4 months of college level calculus in college. Today, I can barely manage basic geometry.

So, if you were to add to your proposition that every person is armed, trained, and responsible, then, hell yeah, that's a safer society. But you know what? If every is trained and responsible, you DON'T NEED TO GIVE EVERYONE GUNS.

Fact is, there's plenty of people in this world, this country...maybe even reading this blog...who no amount of training will ever be safe handling a weapon. And more still that could be presented with a "heat of the moment" situation where, were they armed, would result in someone dead. Your all-armed world would trade massacres like this week's event for more killings of passion as husbands come home to find their wives in bed with another man, or arguments at the pickup basketball game erupt into OK Corrals. We'd be trading one kind of crime for another.

Which is better? Hell if I know. But y'know what? I'd feel a whole lot safer if I knew that legal gun sales were more regulated. If prospective purchasers had to give their permission to have not only their criminal records searched, but also their mental records, their school discipline records, maybe even the notes from their kindergarden teachers. Because it's getting to the point where, in order to prevent another Columbine, or VA. Tech., we need to curtail the rights of some in order to preserve the lives of others.

Your right to own a gun ends when you go crazy and decide to use that gun to end the life of another.

The problem with trying to generalize about this sort of event (it's about gun control, it's about depression, it's about mental health) is that it's an isolated incident. People trying to make this about a broader issue are forgetting that it's one person who did this -- and his motivations, whatever they were, were his own. Not everyone who's a loner, or who was in therapy, or who wrote violent works goes out and kills people. There were warning signs -- but if any of us suddenly snapped, I'm sure if someone looked hard enough, they'd see "signs" of our impending breakdown. ("He played violent video games!" "She wrote a depressing essay!" "The neighbor always thought they were a little moody.")

If this leads to better security on school campuses, that would be great. It it makes people reach out to one another, that would be nice. But ANY person or group who try to use this to advance their own agenda is contemptible.

Don't forget that some will try and muddle the issue as well with stuff like: cars kill people, knives kill people, plastic bags kill people, etc.

Anything and everything that allows them to conveniently ignore the real issues will be mentioned.

Robert Preston -
Again, if you take it that way, that's your problem.

In other words: "I'm an asshole, but it's your problem, not mine."

And you wonder why so many are against assholes having guns in the first place.

he would be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive and save others.

I'm reminded of one Jessica Lynch. Perhaps you remember her? The Pentagon turned her into a propaganda piece.

She was trained for military service, including the use of a weapon.

But when the time came to use that weapon, she panicked.

So, how can you be so sure that anybody, including your son, would be prepared to 'do whatever it takes'?

Hand him a pistol, and he could be as likely to blow somebody else's head off as the guy he's really trying to stop.

And wouldn't you love to see the lawsuits from that.

"You're dead wrong sir. As Heinlein said,"An armed society is a polite society." Remember that. Literally, words to live by."

Heinlein didn't spend a lot of time in East LA.

PAD

Hmm, one more thought:

It also brings me back to thoughts on Osama bin Laden.

I'd love to personally drag him through the streets by the sack.

But were I given the chance to actually do it, would I? Could I?

I wouldn't know.

The same thing applies here to the notion of handing everybody a gun and telling them to defend themselves with it. You're just going to end up with a lot more bodies due to people who aren't prepared for those situations.

Is there any reason for semi-automatic weapons to be legal for ordinary citizens? He legally bought two guns a month apart in Virginia - a Walther .22-caliber pistol, Feb. 9 from a pawnshop, and then on March 16, he bought the second gun, a 9mm Glock 19, from Roanoke Firearms. Virginia law permits the purchase of one gun a month.

Neil

6) The victims will be blamed.

"Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy?... At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands."

Or, if the victims aren't at fault, it must be Islamic style terrorism by Asian immigrants, evolution, failure to believe in God or maybe just allowing the oddballs href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/223123.php">freedom

5) An upswing in incidents of students who write essays/poems/short stories themed around violence suddenly finding themselves tagged as potential shooters and being suspended or expelled.

Sounds like Columbine's aftermath all over again.

4) Advocates of unrestricted gun ownership holding this up as another example of how gun laws should be abolished because if everyone in the college had been packing, they could have fought back. Because in a confined environment where there's inevitably going to be drinking, partying, intense romances, and scads of young people lacking many aspects of maturity, that's what you really want to have on a daily basis: Lots of firepower.

Agreed. You know Christopher Bird, the guy who did the famous Civil War remixes and is currently involved in a half-serious campaign to become the new Legion of Super-Heroes writer? I was just looking at his livejournal, and here is what it says...

"A lot of people advancing the (moronic) 'this only happened because students aren't allowed to carry guns' argument re: Virginia Tech have been claiming that most mass shootings happen at schools.

Via Wikipedia, deadliest mass shootings in the USA since 1960:

Virginia Tech, 2007: Campus (33)
Killeen, 1991: Luby's (21)
San Ysidro, 1984: McDonald's (21)
Austin, 1966: Sniper on campus tower, shooting into both the school area and surrounding commercial district (17)
Edmond, 1986: Post office (15)
Littleton, 2002: School (15)
Atlanta, 1999: Office building (13)
Jacksonville, 1990: Loan office (10)
Red Lake, 2005: Home + school (9)
Fort Worth, 1999: Church hosting Christian rock concert (8)
Honolulu, 1999: Office building (7)
Wakefield, 1999: Office bulding (7)
Seattle, 2006: Rave party (7)
Nickel Mines, 2006: Amish schoolhouse (6)

I do this just to make it clear that that particular talking point is crap."

It occurs to me that a small population of armed folks can get along. But arm a population of 80 million people? That seems like a society on the brink of anarchy.

Take the Rodney King riots. Look how much damage a small group of rioters can do WITHOUT weapons. Imagine how much damage could have been done, in terms of life lost, if every single one of those very angry, very willing to commit violent acts people had been armed.

"Sure," Robert Preston would say, "the non-rioting people could have defended themselves with their own weapons by SHOOTING the rioters."

To what end? Either way, you end the day with hundreds, maybe thousands, dead. With an all-armed populace of millions, every day you run the risk of a small scale ware happening.

Hey, isn't there a part of the world, right now, where gun control is pretty non-existant. Where you can see people with guns walking down just about every street? Someplace that starts with I, ends with Q, and has ra in the middle? And isn't there, I dunno, like an ARMY there, not only armed to the teeth, but with tanks and stuff? I'm sure that's the safest, most polite, peaceful place in the world right now.

You wrote"Had the staff and students at VT been allowed, if not encouraged, to fight back, some of them might possibly have been saved. If that seems intemperate, so be it. The truth oftenasppears that way to some."

How do you know this? How do you know that the staff and students at VT were NOT allowed, wer NOT not encouraged, to fight back?

Were you there? Do you work at VT?

How do you have all this inside information? How can you say how ANYONE else will react to extraordinary circumstances??

intemperate sir?? You've crossed that line a long time ago.

Again, if you take it that way, that's your problem.

Mr. Preston, and I mean this in the same spirit of respect you claim to adhere to at all times...

Go fuck yourself. Deeply and painfully. Ideally with one of the guns you value so highly.

Bye now.

All the best,
Tim Lynch

(Sorry about that, everyone else. Done now.)

Robert Preston: Had the staff and students at VT been allowed ... to fight back

Huh? There's some rule in the Campus Handbook that says you're not allowed to defend yourself when someone points a gun at you?

There was some hall monitor in the classroom making sure the victims didn't run too fast?

Dear PAD,

Why would one want to spend time in East L.A.? And if one did want to, and is properly armed, polite, and prepared, what would one have to fear?

All the best,

Robert Preston

Here's something I forgot to mention (I know I should collect all my thoughts in a single post...sorry).

I have no fond memories of high school. It was a shitty, hellish time of my life. When people say "kids are cruel" it's not only a cliche, it's an understatement.

I don't have any idea why Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold (sp?) shot people who never hassled them. I don't understand that. But as for why they shot people who gave them a hard time, I understand it completely because in the past, when I was a teenager, I was driven to the breaking point by people like that. I so badly wanted to see them suffer and die.

I wanted to kill myself rather than go back to that goddamn place day after day after day for more of the same torment. But I heard these people talking at school one time. They were talking about a guy who had committed suicide. They were laughing about it and saying that it didn't matter because he was a loser anyway. I knew that if I killed myself, those cruel motherfuckers wouldn't learn anything, they wouldn't say "holy shit, I had no idea we'd hurt him that much, maybe we'd better be nicer to people." So that's when I thought that maybe if I took one of them out with me, THEN they'd get the message.

There was one day when I resolved to do it. But I live in Canada, where it ain't that easy to get a gun, particularly when you have no friends who can hook you up or tell you who to call. So I took a knife to school. I hid it in my coat. I walked around looking for an opportunity to sneak up on somebody when they were alone and stab them...planning to use the knife on myself immediately afterwards.

But in the end, I chickened out. I couldn't find anybody alone. I worried about whether I could do it or whether I'd fail. I worried about whether I'd have the willpower to stick a sharp object into my flesh hard enough to actually kill myself. So...nobody died.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if I'd had a gun, it would've been very different. Killing somebody by pulling the trigger of a gun is pretty much the same as pressing a button. It doesn't take willpower. You don't have to worry about whether you're gonna struggle with somebody and lose. Killing yourself with a gun takes a helluva lot less willpower than actually taking a knife to yourself. Again, it's just like pressing a button.

I may not be the happiest or most well-adjusted guy on the planet today...but I'm alive. So are the people I wanted to see dead back then. And the only reason that is so is because of Canadian gun control laws.

If human life is valuable to you, providing people with easy access to firearms will not produce the desired result of keeping people from falling victim to homicide. Not unless you can make sure that everybody treats everybody else with utmost respect and kindness and nobody has any motive whatsoever for murder.

I apologize for any discomfort these admissions may have caused among readers.

Robert Preston said:

"I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy, and reality, and the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact."

What are you talking about? What was the Cold War about? Two nations were pointing weapons at each other to keep one another away, not to kill each other. They were threatening one another to change, not to die. Even heard of a hostage? They usually get guns pointed at them but not for the end of being a bloody corpse.

You really have no grasp of these things, do you?

Dear Mr. Lynch,

Thank you for sharing you opinion. And also for proving a point. I'll let you know how the procedure turns out.

All the best,

Robert Preston

In addition to what Rob Brown said, I had a friend who was once very suicidal. He kept telling everyone he wanted to die, that he SHOULD be dead, but that he didn't want to kill himself using what was available. He knew he could grab a sharp knife from the kitchen, he knew he could crash a car at 100+ mph, he knew he could stick his fingers in an electric outlet. But all he kept saying was, "I'd do it if someone could get me a gun." He's alive today because, thankfully, he couldn't get ahold of a gun.

Rob, it's a good point you make, and it sounds like you've overcome those demons, or at least continue to work against them.

Robert Preston may, attitude aside, be an entirely responsible gun owner. He may take training...it may in fact be mandatory. And even if it wasn't, maybe he'd take it anyway. He's apparantly instilled in his son the importance of being responsible, and being prepared. And if everyone could be as responsible as that, giving a weapon to everyone wouldn't be a big deal.

But as I said before, if you society were totally composed of responsible, respectful people, you wouldn't need weapons. We could have them, or not.

I've got a son. Among other things, I hope to teach him the importance of being prepared. Of taking a few moments to be aware of his surroundings. To spend a little thought about how he might react if...something...were to happen. A car careens out of control onto a sidewalk where he's walking. A high-rise windowpane plummets to the street. A gun-wielding student goes on a rampage near him.

Most of the time, I hope his actions allow him to defend himself...BY RUNNING AWAY. The best way to avoid danger is to... AVOID DANGER. Not shoot it before it shoots you. We say there's a fight or flight reflex. I want to instill a flight or fight impulse. Run/avoid should be your first response. Only when you have no choice should you stick around and try to fight something deadly. Because the risk if you fail is so much greater than if you just run away.

Cowardly? Not really. It's not like I'm trained in any realistic self-defense. I don't consider it cowardice to try and protect my life.

We forgot a theory/spin that will probably appear soon, if indeed it hasn't already:

6) That the whole thing was a Manchurian Candidate government conspiracy to draw attention away from the A.G. Gonzalez debacle.

As PAD said- By the writings this boy put out I suspect that someone abused him too (parent possibly since that's who was doing the abuse in his stories)... focusing on how to stop physical, mental, verbal, and sexual abuse of children would be more valuable then fighting about whether or not we need more gun control ...

Me? I hate guns, and I have no problem with tighter controls.

However I do not believe disarming citizens is a bright move. Historically, when governments disarms certain people groups- or to the extent of all citizens within their society, it hasn't been a good thing.

Still, as the Brits are proud to condescendingly tell us- it works for them. Is it because we are now more evolved? Yeah, I'm not so sure.

Soooo, I'm on the fence as well.

From the shores of another land, arguing over gun control is redundant. You have so may guns already in circulation that you'll never get rid of them.

Things like this will continue to happen, so long as people - abused or not, and that's far from 'obvious' - will feel so wretched, so alienated, so disconnected that something like this becomes the only way they have to make a sound that people will listen to.

And - for whatever it's worth - I'd agree that all of PAD's list shall come to pass, to some extent or another, as people look for some simple and convenient way to put a wrapper around what happened.

Because what really happened, I don't think any of us can really understand.

Cheers.

>I've been hearing Peter Gabriel's "Family Snapshot" in my head for the last day and a half or so. Anyone else getting echoes of that one?

Not I. But I did flash back to Andrew Vachss' short story DRESS-UP DAY.

>I think reasonable people would recognize that the first society would be safer, despite the fact that EVERYBODY could be armed in the second society.

Please explain, then, why Britain's crime rate [violent crime included] had shot up since they all but banned private ownership of weapons? Maybe it's as one criminal put it when interviewed in prison "well, if you've got a choice of where to commit a crime, where will you go? Somewhere where they can't defend themselves? Or someplace where you know they might shoot your head off?"

>I my guess as to the reason that Switzerland has such a low murder rate is that military training and service is mandatory. Discipline, a sense of duty as a citizen, and a healthy respect for the power of their weapon probably helps discourage most citizens from using their weapons for homicide.

Very possibly. In which case, again, the gun isn't the guilty party, it's society as a whole. And, so long as work on gun control to the exclusion of all else, the problem isn't going to go away. Remember McVeigh? He didn't use a gun. Remember, too, that there was a time, not that many years ago, where an awful lot of people were murdered/injured with baseball bats, possibly as many as with guns. And why not? The club was one of the first weapons Man learned to use.

Robert Preston: At no time have I been disrespectful of anyone in this discussion.

Earlier...

Robert Preston: Your posting has got to be one of the most ignorant idiotic statements that I've ever read outside of Mother Jones magazine.

Hmm.

Regarding Kurt's question:

Then, imagine a society in which the ownership of guns is mandatory. Everybody over a certain age is issued a handgun. EVERYBODY.

Being pedantic, I imagine that the death toll will depend a lot on what you set that "certain age" to be. E.g. if you make it 100 years old, there won't be much difference from your "no guns at all" scenario. If you make it 1 year old, I'd expect a huge mortality rate from babies who have no idea what a gun is, and stick it in their mouths. Obviously these are both extreme cases, but I think there is an argument for saying that you ought to reach a certain level of maturity before being issued with a lethal weapon.

Personally, I'm on the "anti gun" side of the fence. This may be because I've lived in England all my life, so the only times I've seen guns in real life are when the army/police are carrying them. Mind you, thinking back to one of PAD's "Young Justice storylines, I also think that there's a romantic appeal to the idea of a bow and arrow, even though that can be an equally lethal projectile weapon. Speculating widly, I wonder how much of the "pro gun" enthusiasm comes from American cultural history, e.g. the wild west vs the middle ages?

Robert - why is it that the United States has a higher gun-death rate than "regulated" countries like Canada and the United Kingdom?

Want to know how many police officers suffered gun-related deaths in the US in 2005 alone? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60.

Want to know how many officers in the UK have suffered gun-related deaths in the past twenty years? (It should be noted that they also very rarely carry guns while on duty). 11. About 1/6th. It's true that the US has a larger population - and therefore, more police - but the size difference comes nowhere near explaining the considerably smaller portion of deaths by gunfire.

But don't let the logic hit you in the ass on the way out.

Posted by: Rene at April 18, 2007 02:05 PM

"Imagine a society in which guns are forbidden. Nobody is allowed to own a gun."

The problem here is that you're dealing with extreme and theoretical situations.

No you aren't. I live in that society. Possession of firearms is outlawed in the UK.

It does somewhat trouble me that the UK's parroting of the US coverage of this tragedy is so blatant - if we were leading our own coverage, you'd see a lot more attention brought to the fact that the man who sold this guy a gun - who failed to complete the correct security checks on him before selling him a lethal weapon - expressed that he had no regret whatsoever in selling him the gun - that it "wasn't his fault" in the slightest. I really, truly hope he doesn't really believe that.

It's a shame that the coverage is all centred around psychological issues, which are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to solve... and not the rather obvious issue that a man with clear mental health problems successfully obtained a gun by lying on an application form.

(I can't understand this "self-defence", er, defence. You defend yourself by killing your attacker? Riiiiiight...)

Dear kurt, PAD and All,

Britain is no example of how to do ANYTHING. The government chastises, at best, and prosecutes, at worst ANYONE who fights back against criminals. In short, the British citizen is not allowed to defend themselves.
This has been my second foray into "blogging". I'm still not impressed, but I'm not ready to give up just yet. It is always a good thing to read and keep opposing views in mind. But...
To answer all of the ridiculousness put forth here by such people as kurt, ZEEK, Tim Lynch, and Neil Ottenstein, to name a few, would take too much time. I have a pretty good idea of how most people who post here think. Not all, but most. As a parting shot, I believe many of you will agree, whether you admit it or not, that the only good to come of this insanity, is the fact that this goblin will not have a chance to breed.

All the best,

Robert Preston

"No you aren't. I live in that society. Possession of firearms is outlawed in the UK."

Heavily regulated is not the same as outlawed. And outlawed also is not the same as no one possessing firearms. So no, I don't think UK society represents the gun-free society Kurt seemed to be alluding to in his comparision.

I also live in a society (Brazil) with restrictive gun control laws. But it's so easy to acquire a gun illegaly here that this may color my views on the issue and make me skeptical about the utopian results of gun control laws.

But if I had to chose between US and UK legislations on the issue, I'd chose UK. I too think it's ridiculous that you can legally buy a firearm in the US without a through psychological profile.

Posted by: Robert Preston at April 18, 2007 05:40 PM

This has been my second foray into "blogging". I'm still not impressed,

People like you who are without self-awareness always amuse me. You've made a jackass of yourself yet you cling to the delusion that your opinion matters to anyone besides you.

Posted by: Robert Preston at April 18, 2007 05:40 PM

but I'm not ready to give up just yet.

Of course you're not. You need to keep going to places like this, where you're not wanted, because you have nowhere else to go.

Posted by: Robert Preston at April 18, 2007 05:40 PM

As a parting shot, I believe many of you will agree, whether you admit it or not, that the only good to come of this insanity, is the fact that this goblin will not have a chance to breed.

I'm sure that's cold comfort to the friends and family of those who were murdered. Anyone with even the slightest ability to empathize with other human beings would realize that. In other words, anyone who is not like you.

You are a small, small person, Bobby. In your infantile self-absorption, you imagine that nothing can exist beyond your severely limited horizons. You cannot understand the thoughts of people whose horizons are not so limited, and are lashing out at what you cannot understand like a frightened child.

Again, it is not your politics that are the problem. The problem was, is, and will continue to be you and you alone. Or, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., I judge you not by your politics but by the content of your character. That content is thin and of low quality. What's sad is that you'll never understand that and will therefore never have the chance to grow beyond the limited little person that you are.

I grew up in a house with a gun (.22 rifle). Never even thought about touching it. In 40 years, my father used it twice, once on a rabid animal the police wouldn't come get, and once on a bird that was attacking our cat at his dish. Owning a gun is one thing. Owning an Uzi with armor-piercing bullets is not defense, it's offense, and offensive.
Several years ago, 60 minutes did a big story showing that 90% of illegal weapons are taken from the factories, before they even get shipped. When is Congress going to stand up to lobbyists and demand tighter accountability from the get go? That's not anywhere near a violation of the 2nd amendment.

Please explain, then, why Britain's crime rate [violent crime included] had shot up since they all but banned private ownership of weapons? Maybe it's as one criminal put it when interviewed in prison "well, if you've got a choice of where to commit a crime, where will you go? Somewhere where they can't defend themselves? Or someplace where you know they might shoot your head off?"

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/041105.html

"Malcolm claims that because UK crooks don't fear disarmed householders, half of burglaries there take place while someone is home, a much larger fraction than in the U.S. Not so--close analysis of the data suggests "hot" burglary rates in the two countries aren't dramatically different."

"Whatever Malcolm may think, there's no direct correlation between weapons restrictions and crime. As she points out, the UK began requiring gun permits in 1920 and in 1953 prohibited the carrying of concealed weapons, even things like Mace. While a slow rise in the UK crime rate began in the mid-1950s, the rate didn't increase sharply until the 80s. Handguns were banned altogether in 1997."

"Rising crime in Britain surely has a lot to do with the lousy economy. From 1974 to 1999 the UK unemployment rate averaged more than 10 percent. It's lower now, but a lot of antisocial behavior became entrenched during that time. Soccer hooliganism is one example; I'd say crime in general is another."

Regarding an earlier comment about King's "Bachman" book, The Long Walk, there's another "Bachman" (title lost in the hazes of impending early senility, apparently) in which a student with a handgun takes his class hostage. King wrote the four "Bachman" books while still in college, i think. Imagine if that manuscript were to come to light on a student's computer these days.

=====================

Posted by Robert Preston

You're dead wrong sir. As Heinlein said,"An armed society is a polite society." Remember that. Literally, words to live by.

It was actually said first, (about a barbarian society) i believe, by a pathological mama's boy who wrote violent fiction and killed himself when his mother died.

Fellow name of Robert E. Howard.

=======================

The people who have mentioned songs that come to mind remind me that, whenever i hear about incidents like this, i flash on the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays" (which was written as the events it commemorates were coming in over the news wire as they did an interview in studio at the Georgia State University radio station).

=========================

Posted by Bobb Alfred

Take the Rodney King riots. Look how much damage a small group of rioters can do WITHOUT weapons. Imagine how much damage could have been done, in terms of life lost, if every single one of those very angry, very willing to commit violent acts people had been armed.

"Sure," Robert Preston would say, "the non-rioting people could have defended themselves with their own weapons by SHOOTING the rioters."

I saw a live, unedited satellite feed from that riot. It clearly showed people, who appeared to be shop owners, on the roofs of their barricaded and untouched shops with rifles, firing apparently at random into the crowds below.

=======================

Posted by Robert Preston

Why would one want to spend time in East L.A.?

Perhaps one lives there, for any number of reasons, including poverty and/or bigotry.

And if one did want to, and is properly armed, polite, and prepared, what would one have to fear?

Oh, i don't know. Why don't you ask the same question of the soldiers in Baghdad?

============================

Posted by polo

Robert Preston said:

"I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy, and reality, and the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact."

What are you talking about? What was the Cold War about? Two nations were pointing weapons at each other to keep one another away, not to kill each other. They were threatening one another to change, not to die. Even heard of a hostage? They usually get guns pointed at them but not for the end of being a bloody corpse.

You really have no grasp of these things, do you?

Actually, on this one, i have to side with Robert.

Damon Runyon wrote, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." You are perfectly free to assume, if you'd like, that if someone points a gun at you, he just wants you to be a nice hostage and behave. But i wouldn't. Too damned many hostages wind up dead - often by accident.

A gun is an implement for killing. It is not a magic wand that makes things work your way. Yes, some people will obey a man with a gun for fear of death (or of pain, a stronger fear in my case and in that of many others, i suspect).

But if you ever draw a gun on me (or any of a number of other people i know/know of, many of them a lot more dangerous than i), you'd better shoot it right then. Because, if i'm out of arm's reach of you, i'll do whatever i have to to survive... and afterward i'll find you. But if you're close enough to grab, one of us will likely die right there.

In real life, the only think you can actually do with a gun is shoot it.

At one time the FBI's doctrine was "Never draw except to shoot. Never shoot except to kill."

just because a citizen is ALLOWED to own a gun does not mean they have to be so readily available. Let's get rid of gun shows that allow sales first. It also doesn't mean that you should have access to all forms of weapons. So lets get rid of weapons that are cappable of high powered multiple shots. Personally, I like the buy back program initiated in Australia. Weapons SHOULD be regulated. Even many in the NRA think this.

Sorry about the typos. I have a new puppy on my lap.

Dear "Billy",

As with all other correspondence with you, this last one is still unimpressive. The only comfort the family members of the slain have is the fact that the THING that did it is dead, and not running around loose. Perhaps if he had been caught alive, he might have gotten "Life" in prison. That would be of comfort to you and maybe them. As things stand, there is no comfort for any of us, without a willingness to stand up for what we believe.
Please, broaden my horizons. I can't wait to see the light.

All the best,

Robert Preston

Dear Mr. Weber,

You're incorrect. Look it up, or site your source.

All the best,

Robert Preston

Posted by: Robert Preston at April 18, 2007 06:36 PM

As with all other correspondence with you, this last one is still unimpressive.

Which would be relevant if I gave a crap about impressing you. Which I don't. So it's not.

And it's obvious I struck a nerve with you, Sparky. You once invited me to correspond with you via e-mail. I rejected your overture on the grounds that you're not someone I wanna know. Now you've changed your tune because I hurt your widdle feelings.

You're a troll, and completely not worth my time. This will be my last post to you, about you, or even acknowledging your existence.

Dear "Billy",

During my first foray into blogging, I ran afoul of you. That was over some political comments made by both sides earlier, but your words did not fill me with fear as you have suggested here. Publicly. Neither do they now. If this is truly an open forum, as PAD would have all believe, then by all means, don't give up. If you don't stir the pudding, it gets lumpy, and then no one likes it.
But understand this. Political Correctness is not going to insert itself into what I write, to you or anyone. Perhaps PAD can hire you as an editor.

All the best,

Robert Preston

"If this is truly an open forum, as PAD would have all believe."

Do you have any reason to doubt it?

Heck, if this wasn't an open forum, PAD would have booted me out a long time ago. :)

Personally, I like the buy back program initiated in Australia.

Snopes argues both sides of the statistics cited for the Australian case, but the overall effect on crime has been statistically negligible based on the population (although glaringly higher if one takes the previously low number of crimes and compares it to the new -- still quite low -- number of crimes since the buyback.)

At no time have I been disrespectful of anyone in this discussion. Again, if you take it that way, that's your problem.

That's pretty disrespectful right there. You should be at least open to the possibility that you caused offense, even if it was unintended.

Believe me, folks, I take this problem very seriously. I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy, and reality, and the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact.

No, not really. Sometimes it's just to get you to do what they want. They number of people threatened with guns is much smaller than the number of people killed by them.

After that, the choice is completely up to YOU. I have a 19 year old son just completing his freshman year, and I know that in the same situation as the kids at VT, he would be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive and save others.

I can understand your feelings. It's tough to have a kid who could have easily been in the same situation. Preparation is good.

That usually means killing the bad guy before he kills you or anyone else. Had the staff and students at VT been allowed, if not encouraged, to fight back, some of them might possibly have been saved. If that seems intemperate, so be it. The truth often appears that way to some.

Even if people were allowed to have guns on campus I doubt that most would have them. The hard reality is that if someone intends to die they can do a lot of damage and not much can be done about it. A maniac with a sword on a crowded street could kill dozens--more if he chose his spot wisely.

Trying to kill the guy sound like pretty poor advise--barricade the doors.

I was a student at UNC when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar went on a joy ride in a pedestrian commons with his SUV in a similar kind of situation. Fortunately, no one died. The only reason that wasn't a Virginia Tech-scale massacre was because the town of Chapel Hill had more restrictive gun purchasing laws -- Taheri-azar said he WANTED a gun, he just couldn't buy one.

I'm glad you made it through that one ok but as someone who lives not far from you...getting a gun should not have been a problem. This is North Carolina. If he could not figure out how to get a gun, legally or not, there are a lot of criminals in Durham who could tell him how it's done.

Take the Rodney King riots. Look how much damage a small group of rioters can do WITHOUT weapons. Imagine how much damage could have been done, in terms of life lost, if every single one of those very angry, very willing to commit violent acts people had been armed.

The argument would be NOT that people could shoot at the rioters but that people would be very unlikely to riot if they knew that the store owners, truck drivers, etc would be packing heat.

Don't know if that's a valid argument or not. It's hard to make conclusions based on what we have here. Some places have strict gun control laws and you wouldn't want to wak down the streets. Other places have lax rules and are safer. The statistics are all over the place and it's hard to trust them, given the bias of those reporting them.

Why would one want to spend time in East L.A.? And if one did want to, and is properly armed, polite, and prepared, what would one have to fear?

You seem to assume that an armed person is safe. tell it to the cops killed every year. We can argue whether or not having a gun makes you safer but surely you understand it doesn't make you invulnerable.

Most of the time, I hope his actions allow him to defend himself...BY RUNNING AWAY. The best way to avoid danger is to... AVOID DANGER. Not shoot it before it shoots you. We say there's a fight or flight reflex. I want to instill a flight or fight impulse. Run/avoid should be your first response. Only when you have no choice should you stick around and try to fight something deadly. Because the risk if you fail is so much greater than if you just run away.

Exactly. Right on.

Now. That said, we have to acknowledge the heroism of Liviu Librescu, a holocaust survivor who kept the shooter out of the classroom at a cost of his own life.

This has been my second foray into "blogging". I'm still not impressed,

Or too impressive, I have to say. You aren't doing your argument any good.

Dear "Billy",

I don't know if Bill Myers is offended by "Billy" but most of the Bills I know, myself included, don't mind. Now "William"...that's usually reserved for when we screw up. When it's followed by my middle name I know I am in serious trouble and if my wife says the whole 3 names it's time to move to Mexico.

If this is truly an open forum, as PAD would have all believe,

In what way is that in any doubt? Have you been banned? Does open mean your words have to go unchallenged?

If you don't stir the pudding, it gets lumpy, and then no one likes it.

We already have a couple of people who see themselves as the tools that stir the pudding. the last thing we need is another tool.

Well, at least we know our politicians will do what is needed to make sure this never happens again:

http://ibtimes.com/articles/20070417/ny-spitzer-video-games.htm

NY Gov Targets Violent Video Games

Here's my opinion. If we have an armed society wherein all citizens are armed, how long before someone, for what ever reason, like at VT, starts shooting people in a crowd. So, how does an armed citizen avoid shooting anyone else in "defending him/herself?" If you miss, you might well hit someone else. Or you might be hit by someone trying to defend his/herself. Crossfire.

No, I don't know what laws should be passed, but I know the ones we have are too loose and too free. If you think guns are the solution for self protection, then these words are lost on you. If you think you need protection from the government, I have news for you. The government has bigger guns than any citizens will ever be able to afford or even just possess. Find a gun in Wal-Mart that will "protect" you from a tank.

Lots of luck.

"After that, the choice is completely up to YOU. I have a 19 year old son just completing his freshman year, and I know that in the same situation as the kids at VT, he would be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive and save others."

"I can understand your feelings. It's tough to have a kid who could have easily been in the same situation. Preparation is good."

Short of going through military or police training, and even after such training, it is hard to know how a person will react under fire. The kind of behavior exhibited by Liviu Librescu is not the result of preparation. It's some undefined quality that manifests itself in extreme situations.

It is hard to tell what would have happened if some of the students had guns. They could have taken him down after he killed fewer students, or they might have added to the mess, shot each other, hit bystanders.

"The argument would be NOT that people could shoot at the rioters but that people would be very unlikely to riot if they knew that the store owners, truck drivers, etc would be packing heat."

Many store owners do, don't they? I don't know if such considerations affect people who are in a state of mind to riot.

----------------

Ever since the massacre I've been wondering why something like that doesn't happen here in Israel. After all, at any given moment you can see soldiers with assault rifles, and maybe one person with a gun. And Israelis are certainly not less crazy than Americans. I have no answer.

I also often wonder how I would behave in a similar situation. I don't know the answer for that either.

Ever since the massacre I've been wondering why something like that doesn't happen here in Israel. After all, at any given moment you can see soldiers with assault rifles, and maybe one person with a gun. And Israelis are certainly not less crazy than Americans. I have no answer.

Israel might be an example of whaty the pro-gun folks argue for--what kind of moron would go into a cafe in Israel and wave a gun around while quoting Pulp Fiction? It would be like robbing a donut shop in America (Sorry Jerry, obligatory "cops in donut shop" joke).

How easy IS it to get a legal gun permit in Israel?

"Israel might be an example of whaty the pro-gun folks argue for--what kind of moron would go into a cafe in Israel and wave a gun around while quoting Pulp Fiction?"

I don't think our experience fits that assumption. I don't think our crazies refrain from going to cafes and shooting because they are afraid of being shot. But I remember only one case where someone went crazy and started shooting people that was not related to the conflict. I think in that case somebody with a gun did take him down. In jerusalem at least what would stop going into a cafe and shooting people is the security guard outside.

"How easy IS it to get a legal gun permit in Israel?"

I really don't know.

In Israel people have guns,but they do not have the cultural associations to them that you have in the US. They are just tools that soldiers and other people who need them have. But I'm not saying that's why things like that are less likely to happen here. I don't even know if they are really less likely, althogh I haven't considered them to be until now. I don't know if the cultural differences between Israel and the US with regard to gun is the answer or even part of the answer to my question. The Palestinians also have a lot of guns, and they suffer from a lot of lawlessness. And the Swiss have had peace for centuries. Go figure.

>I saw a live, unedited satellite feed from that riot. It clearly showed people, who appeared to be shop owners, on the roofs of their barricaded and untouched shops with rifles, firing apparently at random into the crowds below.

Which is different from the draft riots in the Civil War where the authorities has Gattling guns on the roof of buildings of Wall Street to use on rioters, how, exactly? Oh, wait a minute! It's the government so it's OK, right?

>Personally, I like the buy back program initiated in Australia. Weapons SHOULD be regulated.

Which would be great ... if it worked. Canada has had strict gun control on handguns since '34. And what comparatively few legally-owned handguns are out there here are heavily regulated and all registered. Funny thing about that. When the government came up with their idiotic idea of registering rifles and other 'long guns' in the mid 90s, one paper did a bit of digging and learned that, "of the 437 handguns seized by police in Ontario in 1995, only 55 (12.5 per cent) were registered. In 1994, 752 handguns were seized, of which only 80 (10.6 per cent) were registered" proving how ineffective the whole thing is.

>No, I don't know what laws should be passed, but I know the ones we have are too loose and too free.

We have much tighter laws, but it doesn't help much. Even the then-Justice Minister pointed out that much of this won't work unless there's universal compliance. And, as subsequent events proved (which anyone with more than half a brain knew going in, but not our politicians), hard as it may be to grasp, criminals don't tend to obey the law. Gun laws included.

>Even if people were allowed to have guns on campus I doubt that most would have them. The hard reality is that if someone intends to die they can do a lot of damage and not much can be done about it. A maniac with a sword on a crowded street could kill dozens--more if he chose his spot wisely.

All of which pales compared to what a chemistry or physics major could do if they joined the dark side. Remember how many people were killed, not to mention thousands injured in the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway? Look at McVeigh. In one attack he topped the total of several of those US gun-using mass killings put together - and with just a simple, home-made explosive.

Robert Preston:"... he would be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive and save others."

Tough talk, but highly unlikely. In my experience, the ones who most need to talk tough about themselves or about those that they've trained are usually the first to crumble. It's a bit like all the chicken-hawks who ducked service talking about how great it is to fight in war.

Mike Weber: "In real life, the only think you can actually do with a gun is shoot it.
At one time the FBI's doctrine was "Never draw except to shoot. Never shoot except to kill.""

Not true. In six years, I've drawn my gun twice in the line of duty. In neither of the situations did I or any other officer fire their weapon. A show of force sometimes does the job quite well.

In twenty-one years of law enforcement service, my father drew his weapon any number of times. He fired it in the line of duty twice.

Robert Preston: "... the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact."

Not really. There have been any number of people held up and robbed at gun point and never been shot. Even scumbags can draw a line for their behavior. I know a sheriff's deputy who took an unloaded gun off of a robbery suspect. The guy would steal you blind, but he drew the line at killing. Stupid, but true.

Robert Preston: "Had the staff and students at VT been allowed, if not encouraged, to fight back, some of them might possibly have been saved."

Yeah, having potential targets run down a narrow hall AT the shooter would have been so much smarter then heading in the other direction.

The idea that more guns would have solved the problem is, quite frankly, foolish. Who would you have proposed to arm in this situation? The students? It's not really that swift of an idea to arm large groups of 17, 18 and 19 year olds. Part of the reason that the legal age requirement is higher then that in many states is because that group tends to not show the greatest levels of discipline to begin with.

Maybe you want to arm the teachers? These would be the same people that all the conservatives spend their airtime abusing and insulting them for their liberalism. Going by that idea, you'll either have people that won't carry the guns or won't use them. Not much good that.

Plus, if you did get lots of people jumping in to play, the sheer number of additional deaths would be incredible. Three reasons:

Number one: You hear gunfire, screaming and shouts. You whip out your gun and, in fine John Wayne fashion, head in that direction. You see a guy waving a gun and yell at him (if you even bother giving him the chance to shoot at you) to drop his weapon. He turns and points his weapon at you. You fire and put a round center mass, killing him.

Then you hear the real shooter shooting someone else. Or maybe you just hear another self styled Rambo killing another self styled Martin Riggs while the real shooter is somewhere else entirely.

You don't know enough about what's going on. No one does. Even the police aren't working on the best information sometimes. We've had BOLOs come over VCIN for local robberies or shootings where the description of the suspect has changed two or three times in fifteen minutes. Sometimes they even change the race of the shooter due to conflicting first accounts. How much worse do you want to make it for first responders? How many more people do you want shot because the police are going into an active shooter situation where additional idiots are running around and waving their guns at every sound?

Number two: I'm guessing you've never been in a shooter situation or anything even remotely like it. I know people who have. I know trained officers who've been in shootings. Wanna know something? They miss more shots then they hit due to adrenaline screwing up their ability with a gun.

Even in simple training with simunitions, our accuracy drops. We train a lot more then you, your son or most any hypothetical person you may bring up, and we still don't put every shot in the target when the adrenaline hits. There have been documented cases of groups of highly trained soldiers or officers firing fifty or more rounds at close range and only putting ten to twenty in the target.

Now add amateur Rambos to the mix. The odds of even more deaths increases significantly due to stray rounds and amateur stupidity. Again, not that great an option.

Third reason: You decide to Rambo your way in on a shooter and get shot, but not killed. Then the police arrive and you have a hostage situation to deal with. I'm sure people will think kindly of you for that.

I'm sorry, while I'm for gun ownership, but your kind of idiot bothers me and most every cop I know. The only thing that would be worse then the bad guy in most situations would be a self-styled rambo running in to save the day and tripping over himself.

The best thing the students did was to head in the opposite direction of the gunfire. That's the direction where safety is. Beyond that, people with minimal training have no business running into danger and putting their lives, other civilians' lives and first responders' lives at risk.

No, there are no good reasons to back your arguments and there are no good ideas coming out of your posts. And Virginia's gun laws pertaining to purchasing drive me nuts. It's harder to get your drivers license renewed in this state then it is to get a gun. There's something very wrong with that.

Micha,

I met some guys that were part of an Israeli security team while taking a class at Quantico. If they were any example of how well most of the military security units in Israel are trained, I would think most people there would be afraid to deal with them.

Their primary specialty was dealing with hostage or terrorist incidents in airports. When they started doing training drills on the firing range, even guys who can score high 90's in their sleep on the range put their guns up for fear of looking like rank amateurs and embarrassing themselves. I mean, I've seen some damned good shooters before, but..... Damn.

"How easy IS it to get a legal gun permit in Israel?"

OK, I checked online. Not very user-friendly bureaocracy. It seems that it is quite a procedure to privately own a gun, involving also getting an OK from the department of health. It also seems that if you want a gun you have to have a good reason to own one, like being a security guard or own a jewelery store. You also have to be 21 (but I think the drinking age is 18). In short, Robert Preston would consider it hell. But, like I said, Israelis don't think of guns the way Americans do, yet at the same time tey are all around us, more than in the US. Strange.

I'd heard of a few cases where israeli sttlers shot back at palestinian terrorists--were they more easily granted guns because of where they were?

Oh, Robert... Your asinine comments about someone else feeling sorry for the killer's parents?

You're a complete ass.

I've know quite a few good parents who did everything that good parents are supposed to do and they still ended up with a black sheep. Ted Kaczynski is a first class loon. His brother is, by all accounts, a good man. He even turned Teddy in. My mother is one of five children. Four of them turned out really well. My uncle is a drug using con artist and scumbag.

And there is nothing you can do if the killer is mentally ill. He may not have truly hit his breakdown point and showing any real signs until after leaving home and his parents care.

Admitting that you feel sorry for the parents of a child who went that wrong is nothing more then showing some level of decency and humanity. Your comments on the subject show off your tendencies to be an unintelligent ass.

Robert Preston posted:

You're incorrect. Look it up, or site your source.

Howard said "A barbarian society is a polite society"

And, since he killed himself in 1936, before RAH ever actually published anything, he certainly comes first.

Posted by Jerry Chandler

Mike Weber: "In real life, the only think you can actually do with a gun is shoot it. At one time the FBI's doctrine was "Never draw except to shoot. Never shoot except to kill.""

Not true. In six years, I've drawn my gun twice in the line of duty. In neither of the situations did I or any other officer fire their weapon. A show of force sometimes does the job quite well.

Sometimes. But Fulton County cops just shot two men in a nightclub parking lot, locally. They tried to break up a fight and the fighters turned on them. And apparently ignored the "show of force".

In twenty-one years of law enforcement service, my father drew his weapon any number of times. He fired it in the line of duty twice

However, neither you nor he are in the FBI, either, right?

A "show of force" by a uniformed officer is a bit different from a nervous bank robber holding a gun on a hostage, or from a plain-clothes Special Agent in a tense situation facing such a guy.

And at what point are you willing to change your "show of force" into an actual shooting? How close does the guy who figures you won't shoot going to have to get before you do? Or how many steps does the guy walking away or otherwise ignoring your orders have to take before you fire?

I re-iterate, quoting Donald Hamilton: "The only thing you can do with a gun is shoot it." If you're not damned sure you're willing to shoot it and you don't think it would taste good, don't draw it.

Number two: I'm guessing you've never been in a shooter situation or anything even remotely like it. I know people who have. I know trained officers who've been in shootings. Wanna know something? They miss more shots then they hit due to adrenaline screwing up their ability with a gun.

I have. Luckily, it turned out i didn't have to shoot any people. (Though one idiot in Viet Nam apparently never *did* believe how close he come to being a "friendly fire" statistic when he sacred hell out of me and my buddy about 2AM on a special guard duty...)

There was a situation in NYC (mentioned in some book Serpico, maybe?) in which a Bad Guy in court got hold of a gun somehow, took the judge hostage, and demanded to talk to someone from the DA's office.

A cop pretending to be an assistant DA, with a hideout .32 auto strapped to his ankle went in, offering himself in exchange for the judge; the cop and the Bad Guy sat down opposite each other at a standard conference table. The cop saw his chance, grabbed for the piece, and both shot their guns empty. Across a conference table.

The cop then threw away the gun and wrestled the Bad Guy into submission.

I met some guys that were part of an Israeli security team while taking a class at Quantico. If they were any example of how well most of the military security units in Israel are trained, I would think most people there would be afraid to deal with them.

Their primary specialty was dealing with hostage or terrorist incidents in airports. When they started doing training drills on the firing range, even guys who can score high 90's in their sleep on the range put their guns up for fear of looking like rank amateurs and embarrassing themselves. I mean, I've seen some damned good shooters before, but..... Damn.

When i was in Viet Nam, i met some Australian Air Commandos. Personally, i'd rather not be in the same war with them, much less the same firefight. Not that i think they would be likely to shoot me by mistake, but becaue of the old tenet that holds "Never share a foxhole with someone braver/crazier than yourself."

Those just boyos didn't *care*.

One of them looked as if he was seriously ready to show us how well his FN machine pistol worked by shooting a weathervane off a building on the Army base. Outside the Main Exchange. With two armed MPs standing right there and getting tenser by the minute...

"During my first foray into blogging, I ran afoul of you. That was over some political comments made by both sides earlier..."

I should stick by my vow to ignore you, but you're doing something that really burns me: you're lying. And you're doing it in such a way that it insults the intelligence of every poster here. Because what really happened is in the blog archives for all to see. It really doesn't make sense to lie about what you said when what you said is a matter of public record.

See, you didn't run afoul of me over political comments. You ran afoul of me because you insulted every poster here by declaring that no one -- NO ONE -- who blogs here regularly would have the guts to sacrifice their life for that of another. That's not a political comment. It's a personal one.

"...but your words did not fill me with fear as you have suggested here. Publicly. Neither do they now."

Again, you're lying. I never said I scared you. I said I HURT YOUR FEELINGS. Which I clearly did. Because you inivited me to start an e-mail correspondence with you and I declined because, well, as a person you SUCK. And I said so. Publicly.

"If this is truly an open forum, as PAD would have all believe, then by all means, don't give up."

I haven't given up on this forum. I've given up on you because you're an obnoxious little wretch.

And this IS an open forum. If it wasn't, Peter would've booted your sorry ass out of here from the get-go. The same openness that enables you to use this blog to act like a dick enables me to tell you that you are a dick.

By the way -- I don't give a rat's ass about your emotional reactions to me. Be afraid, be sad, be happy, be angry, be whatever -- I don't care.

"If you don't stir the pudding, it gets lumpy, and then no one likes it."

Don't fool yourself into thinking you're serving a necessary function around here. Were you to leave now, we'd be none the poorer for your absence.

"But understand this. Political Correctness is not going to insert itself into what I write, to you or anyone."

NO, SPARKY. YOU. UNDERSTAND. THIS:

Your politics aren't your problem. It's your shitty personality.

I like many conservative commentators. George Will and David Brooks come immediately to mind. And there are certain conservative principles with which I agree, including the belief that "the government that governs least governs best." Hell, Bill Mulligan is fairly conservative, and he and I are actually friends.

I am not reacting negatively to your politics. Stop hiding behind the mantle of conservatism, because conservatism isn't the problem. If you can cram one thought into that noggin of yours, let it be this:

I am not rejecting your politics.

I. Am. Rejecting. YOU.

Sadly, in as open an environment as your average university, if somebody wants to rack up a body count and really puts their mind to it, odds are they'll find a way to do it. Not to make light in any way, shape, or form, but what's the Klingon proverb? "A thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man."

While I don't like guns very much, that's one genie that just isn't going back into the bottle. Training and education are the key, as well as background checks. Testing and liscensing are required to practice medicine in any capacity, drive a car, hell, to be a bartender. But any weekend warrior with an itchy trigger finger who can't hit the broad side of a barn can legally get his hands on enough firepower to lay seige to a small town? Something's just not right with that equation.

Posted by: Robert Preston at April 18, 2007 03:36 PM
I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy, and reality, and the reality is that when someone points a gun at you, they mean to kill you. That's a fact.

Oh, shit. That means I actually died about 12 years ago.

*Disappears in a puff of logic*

Mike Weber,

I'll argee with most of your post, but even your post refutes the statement that the only thing you can do with a gun is shoot it. Sometimes you will. More times then not (outside of a war zone) you won't.

"However, neither you nor he are in the FBI, either, right?"

Nope. However, my dad did spend a lot of time in the 80's working on a multi-jurisdictional unit that dealt with drug smuggling on the I-95 corridor in the Petersburg/Richmond area. Lots of fun that was. He also saw time in Korea and Vietnam when he was in the military. I think that’s why he liked working as a cop in Petersburg in the 80’s. It was something familiar to him.

You’d kinds have to be a local to get that.

Now that I've gotten THAT out of my system...

I think the problem here is that many of us are trying to cope with a senseless tragedy by constructing an explanation. Some of us are grasping for something that will help us regain a sense of control, a sense that there is order in the world.

This tragedy demonstrates that we do not have such control, and that the kind of order we crave does not exist. Senseless things happen. Lives are lost for no damn good reason, and others are scarred forever by the loss.

Even if this tragedy could've been prevented, another one would've snuck up on us and bitten us in the collective ass. We can argue about more guns vs. less guns to our hearts content, but... I don't think it would've made a difference. This disturbed individual would've found a way to kill and maim people no matter what.

We can talk about recognizing the signs but this sort of thing is an exception to the rule of everyday life. Seriously -- how many mass murderers do YOU know? It's so far outside of the realm of our normal experience, it's hard to know how to react. Even if you recongize the signs... what do you DO? Being creepy isn't against the law.

Bottom line: the best thing we can do is to recognize that we mustn't take our lives, nor the lives around us, for granted.

I'm stealing Rex Hondo's post from another thread because it underscores one of my points so well.

"Cho had an older sister, Sun-Kyung, who graduated from Princeton University with an economics degree in 2004, Princeton officials confirmed.

The Princeton student newspaper reported Wednesday that she is pursuing a career as a State Department contractor working on the reconstruction of Iraq. It said that Sun-Kyung Cho was “palpably upset” when it contacted her and that she refused its requests for an interview.

I pray for her that the stigma of being related to a killer doesn't destroy her life and carreer.

-Rex Hondo-"

She seemed to have turned out all right. Again, the parents may well have been good pasrents. Someone admitting that they feel sorry for the family of the shooter is nothing more then showing some level of decency and humanity. Your comments on the subject show off your tendencies to be an unintelligent ass.

What gets me is that the guy got the guns legally. If he wanted to make a point about gun control, he did it most effectively.

The thing is, though, the whole reason I support the second amendment is, and here's where politics enter in, because of administrations like the current one. I don't trust them not to decide that they've been playing nice with us long enough and now martial law will be enforced. With all the wiretapping and surveillance and general harassment of those civilians who disagree with them, I'm just a bit concerned. And no, with all due respect to those of you reading who are in law enforcement and in the military, I don't trust the police or the military blindly either.

Please, please don't misunderstand--I'm not suggesting that the populace rise up or anything similar. But I can see a lot of encroachments on civil liberties that...that really bother me. I worry less about some idiot trying to kill me than become a slave in a police state.

Brian C. Saunders's post up there reminded me of some of the truly stupid people I know with firearms. Like the one guy who fell asleep in a tree while hunting deer and he fell out. The rifle he had went off, shooting through his foot. Or the idiot who left a loaded pistol in the closet, told his 10-year old where it was, and then was amazed when the kid blew half his ear off. For those reasons, and several other mental Micronauts that I know, I'm pretty much against everyone being issued weapons at a given age. Heck, I see the things people do while driving, hate to imagine any of them armed.

I'm really curious to see if anything comes out of the parental abuse angle. I'd also like to know where this guy got the money for the weapons. If he got it from his parents, could they then be facing some kind of legal action or litigation? Is that any more plausible than the abuse leading to litigation?

I don't know that much will, or should, truly come of the possible parental abuse angle, at least from a legal standpoint. I know people who were abused as children and still turned out to be productive, even exemplary members of society. Then there are those whose parents, by all appearances, do everything "right," but still turn out to be wastes of material.

I, as well as others here, can attest to the fact that one can have parents who are understanding and supportive, yet still struggle with depression and other emotional issues.

Whether Cho was fundamentally "broken" in ways we can never know, or if he chose to give in to his rage, whatever the source, his parents did not pull the trigger, and it would be a tremendously dangerous precedent to allow them to be punished for the actions of their son.

-Rex Hondo-

6) That the whole thing was a Manchurian Candidate government conspiracy to draw attention away from the A.G. Gonzalez debacle.

When I checked the news on Tuesday to see what the results were of the planned meeting between Reid/Pelosi and Bush and saw that it hadn't happened because Bush was too busy talking about the shooting to have met with them on that day, I sort of wondered something like that. I certainly don't think the administration planned for it to happen, but it did serve as yet another distraction from what they are doing. Plus, apparently, they were only too happy to use it as an excuse to blow off the meeting with the Democratic leadership in favor of Bush taking the time to tell us what a tragedy it was (like we didn't already know that).

focusing on how to stop physical, mental, verbal, and sexual abuse of children would be more valuable then fighting about whether or not we need more gun control ...

Hell yes. I mean, if I had a choice between not being a victim of abuse from my peers and gun control laws, I would choose to not be a victim. It's always struck me as really strange that when you're an adult, you can take legal action against people for slander, or for harassment...but when you're a child, everybody is free to spread as many embarassing rumors about you as they wish, and they can harass you as much as they wish, without any consequences, even though that's the period of a person's life when these things do the most damage.
But it's not easy to stop abuse, and the next best thing is to ensure that if somebody is pushed over the edge, they don't have the tools to do very much harm. As for the people who were heartless enough to push them over the edge in the first place, one can only hope karma takes care of them.

Please explain, then, why Britain's crime rate [violent crime included] had shot up since they all but banned private ownership of weapons? Maybe it's as one criminal put it when interviewed in prison "well, if you've got a choice of where to commit a crime, where will you go? Somewhere where they can't defend themselves? Or someplace where you know they might shoot your head off?"

I have no idea why they have not put any effort into inventing a weapon that didn't kill people whenever it was used for "defense." There are stun guns and mace, yes, but you have to be very close to your attacker to use those things and I'm not sure if they're as easy to acquire as a handgun. As it is now, weak people such as elderly women appear to have only two options when they are crime victims: be completely helpless, or end their attacker's life with a bullet. Is there not some kind of middle ground we can provide them with?

Owning a gun is one thing. Owning an Uzi with armor-piercing bullets is not defense, it's offense, and offensive.

Exactly. There are people who have cried foul when others try to deprive them of the right to own guns LIKE THAT...they're allowed to own other kinds of guns, but not assault weapons. But they LOVES their assault weapons, and according to them they have a constitutional right to own Uzis, AK-47s, and the rest. What's wrong with them? I remember something about this on the Colbert Report a while ago...people were using assault rifles to shoot small animals I think, a writer for a gun magazine who was very much in favor of the right to bear arms opi