the answer is plain and simple: ban the guns! anything else, I call it failure of democracy. Shame on all you Americans, let it happens again and again!
This is so disturbing: August 1, 1966: Austin, Texas Charles Whitman points a rifle from the observation deck of the University of Texas at Austin's Tower and begins shooting in a homicidal rampage that goes on for 96 minutes. Sixteen people are killed, 31 wounded. May 4, 1970: Kent, Ohio Four students are killed and nine wounded by National Guard troops called in to quell anti-war protests on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. November 1, 1991: Iowa City, Iowa Gang Lu, 28, a graduate student in physics from China reportedly upset because he was passed over for an academic honor, opens fire in two buildings on the University of Iowa campus. Five University of Iowa employees are killed, including four members of the physics department, and two other people are wounded. The student fatally shoots himself. February 29, 1996: St. Louis, Missouri A 30-year-old man fires into a school bus where two are injured, including a pregnant teenager and the bus driver. August 15, 1996: San Diego, California Frederick Martin Davidson, 36, a graduate engineering student at San Diego State, is defending his thesis before a faculty committee when he pulls out a handgun and kills three professors. February 19, 1997: Bethel, Alaska A 16 year-old shoots and kills his principal and a student. Two other students are injured. October 1, 1997: Pearl, Mississippi A 16-year-old kills his mother, then goes to school and shoots nine others. Two die. December 1, 1997: West Paducah, Kentucky A 14 year-old shoots eight students as they pray in school. Three die and one student is left paralyzed. December 15, 1997: Stamps, Arkansas An eighth grader is arrested and charged as an adult after he confesses to shooting and wounded two of his fellow students as he hid in the woods outside of a high school. March 24, 1998: Jonesboro, Arkansas Two boys, ages 11 and 13, shoot 14 students and one teacher. The teacher and four of the students die. April 28, 1998: Pomona, California A 14 year-old shoots three boys. Two are killed. May 21, 1998: Springfield, Oregon A 15 year-old shoots and kills both parents before going to school and opening fire in the cafeteria. Two students are killed. April 20, 1999: Littleton, Colorado Two boys, ages 16 and 17, shoot 35 students and 1 teacher before committing suicide. Twelve students and the teacher die. May 13, 1999: Port Huron, Michigan Two 14 year-olds plot to kill at least 154 people at school in an attempt to outdo the shooting at Columbine high school. They are stopped after fellow students report them. Oct. 28, 1999: Cleveland, Ohio A 14 year-old and three 15 year-olds plan on killing mostly black students, then dying in a shoot-out with police. A student's mother alerts officials. January 29, 2000: Cupertino, California A 19 year-old plans to attack his high school with guns and explosives. He takes photos of himself and his arsenal. When he has the photos developed, a drug store clerk sees them and calls police. February 29, 2000: Mount Morris Township, Michigan A 6 year-old boy brings a .32 semi-automatic handgun to school and kills a first grader. February 5, 2001: Hoyt, Kansas Three students, ages 16, 17, and 18, plan a school shooting. An anonymous caller to a tip line alerts police. When their homes are searched, police discover guns, bombs, and white supremacist drawings. February 7, 2001: Fort Collins, Colorado A 14 year-old and two 15 year-olds plot to "redo Columbine." Several classmates alert the police after overhearing them talking about it. February 11, 2001: Palm Harbor, Florida A 14 year-old builds a bomb having a kill radius of 15 feet. The parents of another student who had received an e-mail detailing the bomber's plans alert the sheriff's deputies. February 14, 2001: Elmira, New York A high schools student's plans for a school shooting are foiled after students bring the fact that he had weapons on him to a teacher's attention. He carried 14 pipe bombs, three smaller bombs, a propane tank, a sawed-off shotgun, and a .22 caliber pistol into the school by a duffel bag and also a book bag full of ammunition. On December 17, 2001, Jeremy he is sentenced to 8 1/2 years. March 5, 2001: Santee, California A 15 year-old opens fire from inside a school bathroom, shooting 15 and killing 2. January 16, 2002: Grundy, Virginia Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, 42, recently dismissed from Virginia's Appalachian School of Law, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students. The attack also wounds three female students. October 28, 2002: Tucson, Arizona Failing University of Arizona Nursing College student and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores, 40, walks into an instructor's office and fatally shoots her. A few minutes later, armed with five guns, he enters one of his nursing classrooms and kills two more of his instructors before fatally shooting himself. March 21, 2005: Red Lake, Minnesota Jeff Weise, 16, kills his grandfather and companion, and then arrives at school where he kills a teacher, a security guard, five students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead. August 25, 2006: Essex, Vermont A gunman looking for an old girlfriend bursts into a Vermont elementary school and kills a teacher. September 2, 2006: Shepherdstown, West Virginia Douglas W. Pennington, 49, kills himself and his two sons, Logan P. Pennington, 26, and Benjamin M. Pennington, 24, during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University. September 13, 2006: Van Nuys, California A student is shot and killed in a crosswalk in front of a school. The incident is suspected to be gang related. September 25, 2006: Las Vegas, Nevada A bus driver pulls over to drop off students. One student gets off the bus and then shoots at it. Three bullets hit the back of the bus, but none of the 34 students on board are injured. September 27, 2006: Bailey, Colorado An adult male sexual predator enters a school, sexual assaults six female students, kills a fleeing girl, and then kills himself. October 2, 2006: Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania An adult male sexual predator enters a one-room Amish School and kills six female students and himself. April 16, 2007: Blacksburg, Virginia A gunman kills 33 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech. The gunman later dies.
Do you feel ashame if the gunman is Chinese, Black, Jews or White? Are we missing the big picture here?
Yes, if guns were banned, this killer (who murdered 30+ people) would never be able to get a gun. After all, that would be illegal and I'm sure he wouldn't want to break the law or anything...
Well, in this case, this guy hardly seemed like the type who would have known where to buy guns illegally.
I don't buy the whole "blame the media and entertainment" theory. If a violent movie or game leads you to killing a whole bunch of people, then there is clearly some mental problems there. I've seen the most violent movies and played the most violent games, they have never made me feel like I had to go kill people or imitate what I've seen. I'm sure people here and around the world have had their share of violent media and it didn't make them go crazy. Why does everything always have to point to the media? Is it too far fetched to say that this was just a crazy and depressed guy with some screws loose in his head?
i'm not blaming the media at all. i do think they lead culture. i don't think there is any question that the media desensitizes us to violence. and we lap it up. i have a hard time scoffing at the suggestion that our culture is violent and that's led, at least in part, by the way we view the world through the lenses of the constant barrage of media images. seriously, we live in a culture where a good number of people spend more time with TV, radio and computers than with real people. the idea that this isn't influential is just completely unrealistic to me. i'm not suggesting that the media is to blame. i think our culture is to blame. but i think our culture is largely influenced by the various media.
I've obviously been extremely saddened by the VT murders, but I don't have any personal connections to anyone involved. So the most difficult thing for me was when an 'online friend' from Michigan passed on the story of a guy who was the top poster (30,000+ posts) on a Detroit sports forum (motownsports.com) who was killed in the attack. It was absolutely gut-wrenching to read through some of the threads there, where they are desperately trying to find out if the guy was OK and then piece together the facts that he was not. Somebody got in touch with the Tigers and they posted an article about the student on their website - http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/news/...t_id=1916093&vkey=news_det&fext=.jsp&c_id=det .
My thoughts on this are...if they couldn't stop this guy after doing all the seemingly right things (students reporting him, teachers reporting him, cops involved), then there isn't a single person in this country who can be stopped should they go off the deep end. The truth of the matter is that any student who goes around stalking women on campus and taking unwelcome pictures of people (in class or whereever) should have been kicked out. He was given too many chances. But, that still wouldn't have stopped him from coming back and doing this madness. Dr. Phil has spoken a lot about prediction and the problem lies in predicting what a person will do. Well...duh...thanks for the helpful insight there. The biggest thing I don't understand is how a guy who won't speak can make it in college. How can you go through classes without speaking? I guess he has proven you can. We need someone to graduate with a degree without speaking in college. LOL. Isn't public speaking a required course regardless of college? He would have gotten a zero in that class.
Its possible for sure. I know at my university Public Speaking is required as a gen ed. But in my years at college so far, I've given just a couple speeches in class. They arent saying the kid never spoke are they? He just kind of kept to himself. If a lot of his courses were mostly papers than he wouldnt have to speak. The times he did speak were probably on a certain topic and probably said as much as was needed. Though i've heard that his writing is pretty bad as well...havent seen those papers but heard they're floating around on the net.
He probably knew he couldn't make it through a job interview so he better off himself before he graduates. Unfortunately, it reads like he did the dual-pistol thing and actually played a game of CounterStrike on real people. He could have figured...if I'm going to kill myself...why not do this as well? I think that is what he was thinking...CounterStrike in reality...before I go.
i'm not sure that writing annoying messages to a girl or calling girls who don't want to talk to you are grounds for expulsion. stalking is disturbing, but at least from reports it seems as if the people who were stalked did not press serious charges against him. i think from what I am reading, he didn't seem like a mass murderer. bits and pieces like he was cited for speeding... and that is the worst criminal offense that he has had? certainly i am not part of the criminal investigation department, but it seems it would be quite hard to pin down a guy like him and say, oh yeah. i can definitely see such and such killing people. reminds me a bit of minority report, where the police incararate a person before he even commits a crime. how do you know is my question...
If our media is to blame for our culture and our culture is to blame for this incident, how can the media not be to blame for this incident? In my opinion, and no offense Max, the whole media angle is just something that's an easy way out. People don't have to view the way they raise their kids, the way they personally skip out on responsibilities, etc. because they can always point to the media and say well that must be the culprit, obviously. People don't kill because they're desensitized to violence. People kill because they have a propensity for violent activities. Those are the types of people who are attracted to violent materials in the first place as an outlet. I play tons of violent video games but not as an outlet. I find them entertaining but I certainly don't want to go out and commit mass murder. This country had a huge problem with violence in the Wild West period. Murder rates were much higher than they are in the worst cities in America today. What was the culprit then? Newspapers? Violence has been around for a long time. It was around before any form of mass media and will be around forever. Some people just aren't completely human with regards to care for other human beings. That's the sad truth. There's no point in trying to find out why they're that way because there is no why. The media does not drive this country to an obsession with violence. That's just a cop out excuse to avoid dealing with the real problems of respect for others and self responsibility that are the real problems in our country. It's much easier to point to CounterStrike and say "yeah, that's what did it" when in actuality the problem is much deeper and would not end even if all the violent media were taken off the airwaves for a while. Some people are just violent.
Washington Post earlier had made the Counterstrike connection, as well as the New York Post. The reference has since been removed form the Washington Post,
here's where you have me all wrong...and the rest of your post loses me. because i didn't say the media is to blame for our culture. i think it's both a leader and an indicator of our culture.
Havent read through all these pages, but Im wondering why in the world ESPN has stuff about it on their website? It makes no sense to me.
One clear tie in the examples is that they are male. Pretty rare for acts like this by females. IMO the causes are complex and interactive. -Not just the easily availability of guns. (though moreso in America than most industrial countries) -Not just the saturation of violent images, most of which accessable when young--movies, video games (moreso in America than most industiral countries) -Not just that we have a large population (though not near the biggest, China, India). -Not just that some people do go insane and become delusional (probably no more so in America than any where else). -Not just that there is a lot of bullying and isolation in youth (maybe moreso in America, maybe just a fact of youth). -Not just we frequently blame certain social groups for our troubles (maybe moreso in America, maybe not). But we have condititions ripe where a male can feel isolated and depressed, even to the point of being delusional/insane, we have saturated images of violence (media) to play out delusions (instead of just taking one's own life--though also very sad), and we have very easy access to mass killing weapons. I personally think we can address #1 and #2 a lot better. But it isn't simple. Take away assault weapons, there are still explosives that can be made by the half-witted (see OKC). So we got to work on other things too, including somehow helping the ostracised (identifcation and counseling?) or perhaps making adults more aware and invested in schools and other places--making them better environments.
Ahh. I guess I took you saying it's a leader of our culture to mean that it is a cause of our violent culture.
VT has decent football program. Sucks, but that basically the reason. That's why they keep interviewing Frank Beamer, of all people, about this.
How do we know this guy didn't have multiple personality disorder? I mean...he went by Cho and "Question Mark"...which he claimed was his brother. He called his roommate saying "this is not Cho...this is Question Mark" and did that several times. If this guy was molested by someone in his past ( as one of his writing papers was based on a helpless kid molested by his stepfather and the anger he felt over that ), then he could very well have had MPD to suppress those feelings. I guess we will never know. MPD could be difficult to diagnose if you are not looking for it. Just throwing out that possibility as I haven't heard it mentioned.
