Thirty-two ¬†students dead, many more wounded - some critically. It’s stupifyingly hard to get your head around. SNO was accepted to VaTech, might have gone there. Planned to in fact, wanted to study in the engineering department. Where the shootings occurred.
Your call, I told him a couple years ago - it’s a great school on a beautiful campus and the Corps of Cadets is a proud institution. Only think you may want to think about is the fact that the Corps is full-time obligation for the 1000 or so members, while the other 24,000 kids are wearing long hair and blue jeans. It’d be different than VMI or the Citadel where everyone was a part of it, different too than Penn State or USD where it only a part-time thing. But your call.
It’s mind-bending to think that a conversation like that might have been all the difference between a stomach-churning disaster seen from a distance and a howling emptiness that will never be filled. It’s hard to think about the families of so many young people who will live with that emptiness for the rest of their lives, never able to comprehend the sheer randomness of it, the “why” which we all seek in times like these. Pray for them. It couldn’t hurt.
–
I wish I could pen a note to all these pathetic losers who want to go out in a blaze of murderous rage before killing themselves: Skip right to the end. This won’t make you important and the “power” that you seize is ephemeral, meaningless and therefore worthless - no one else wants it. No one would take it from you for their own.
No one will remember you no matter how many lives you take - you will be forgotten. You will lose your name - we will call you “Affliction,” and your death will not be mourned. We will only remember the innocent people who died, but their loss will not make you any more significant. Your acts are as random and as devoid of meaning to us as a mudslide, they cannot ennoble or grant even negative importance, so do us all a favor: Skip the part where you take others’ lives as a way make your own more important - it cannot be done.
Skip to the end.
UPDATE: It seems that VaTech is a “gun free” campus, so apparently this crime couldn’t have happened.
How much time it must have taken to shoot nearly 60 people. What if any of them had themselves been armed?
UPDATE 2: A good read from Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy that puts the rush to policy paliatives - an unseemly rush, from the first brush - into a kind of sensible perspective.
(I)n my view, the problem with responding to news of tragedy with policy ideas right away is that we tend not to realize in such situations how often our “proposals” are really expressions of psychological need. It’s human nature to respond to tragedy by fitting it into our preexisting worldviews; we instinctively restore order by construing the tragic event as a confirmation of our sense of the world rather than a threat to it.
This means that often we won’t pay a lot of attention to the details of tragedies and what caused them. We’ll just know deep down inside what happened, and what caused it, and how to stop it next time. Take today’s tragic events at VA Tech. If you’re committed to gun control, the tragedy probably proves to you that there are too many guns; if you’re against gun control, the tragedy probably proves the exact opposite. Given that people will tend to see in events what they want to see, turning to policy right away will come off as rudely “playing politics” to those who don’t share your worldview. And obviously this doesn’t foster a helpful environment for policymaking, either.
Just so.
29 responses so far ↓
1
Kris, in New England
// Apr 16, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Lex, knowing you have family in Virginia, obviously glad it sounds like they are safe. Amazing how a simple conversation where you are only sharing your opinion can have such unknown purpose.
For myself, I only feel - silence.
2
Theodore
// Apr 16, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I heard about it this afternoon, in a classroom. I sit pretty near the door in that room. If it had happened here, I might have been the first to die. What the hell do you do?
3
ASM826
// Apr 16, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Here?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a suggestion. Train the students to have a different repsonse than cowering. We practice for fire drills, line up, get out. So, let?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s practice for a shooter. Cover the window in the door. Biggest, strongest people in room in rows, holding chairs and desks. When the shooter enters the room, throw the desks, chairs, books, tables, bookcases. then rush him. Someone MIGHT get hurt. Sure they might. But the shooter will be going down. Practiced from about Junior High on, along with some basic martial arts, and we could stop seeing healthy young adult men as victims.
Oh, and let CCW permits mean what they say. If I can carry, then let me carry. I would be willing to take any training, pass any background check, do whatever the police have to do (in short) to be able carry freely. Enough of us, and less of this sort of situation would occur. Someone might get shot, but not 40 or 50 people.
4
Lee
// Apr 16, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Sadly, my first reaction this morning upon hearing of this tragedy was to ascertain the previous heinous act’s victim count to determine if this coward had raised the bar. What has become of me, us, our society, when the first thing on my damned mind is if he had accomplished more than the last. I am ashamed of myself for my callous desensitized humanity, and wonder how in Gods name I became this way…
I don’t know if this is a good solution, but every law abiding citizen whom can be armed legally in a concealable fashion needs to be lawfully allowed to do so, so that SOMEBODY… ANYBODY… can take these sacks of transplantable organs out of commission at the earliest available opportunity with a clean head shot.
What a horrible tragedy…
5
riceburner147
// Apr 16, 2007 at 4:48 pm
What Lee said !!!
6
Babs
// Apr 16, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more Lee. I still have a son in college and, I have to say, he has no talent to defend himself, however, he does have something to give to his country and humanity.
The fact that he doesn’t have the training to be a shooter should not be a reason to let him go to the slaughter.
This whole thing is a terribly sad state of events for our ountry. I would really like to hear from the ROTC Cadets about what went down…
7
Bryan Strawser
// Apr 16, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I went to college at a “gun free” campus - didn’t stop me from carrying - I just didn’t get caught.
Bryan
8
CrewDawg
// Apr 16, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Guys, this coward went in with 2 automatic wepons and sprayed the rooms. these are very small rooms, with 40-60 people in them. just walked in and started shooting. Ive been in these very rooms in classes, and had classes there as well. With this coward standing at the doors of classrooms mowig down people, as was said earlier, at least 60 people shot muliple times, if anyone had tried to take this guy out, they wouldn’t've made it 2 steps towards him. I know my fellow cadets, one of whom is still unaccounted for, and I know my fellow Techmen, and if anyone of them could stopped this, they would’ve done so in a heartbeat. This was a tragedy that probably couldn’t have been predicted, and is not anyone fault but the coward who loaded his nine mike mike and his 22 cal and decided that today was the day he wanted to take 32 people to be judged by God along with himself.
9
GEO6
// Apr 16, 2007 at 8:06 pm
The term “Gun Free” may have given some a warm and fuzzy but it didn’ deter that SOB. These guys are harder to detect because they are beneath the scan of the people looking for terrorists and the like and because they act on their own, they leave few, if any, clues before they carry out their plans. The police cannot stop a diabolically determined whack job and protect you like the left would have you believe. And gun control in NOT the solution. Hate to say it but there is a lot to that argument that even one armed citzen with a concealed weapons permit could have stopped that slaughter. I doubt that he would have considered a plan to chain up all the building’s doors and round people up like cattle IF others there MAY have been armed. Yeah, the young age of the student body is below 21 but even a faculty member could have made a difference. When the realization that many people may be armed you would be surprised how much it would improve peoples manners. Another significant issue: I would like to know how this foreign scumbag obtained the weapons.
The whole thing is so sad and disgusting. My heart and prayers go out to the families of those slain.
10
CrewDawg
// Apr 16, 2007 at 8:07 pm
also
We here at virginia tech are having serious questions about the extreme lack of information we recieved all morning long. we stood on the sidewalks 100yards away from this, and weren’t told to go inside, to go away, we were just kinda allowed to sit there. and this was at 1000 in the morning, while a murder had occured at 0730, and the gunman in that case was and still is at large. I think over the next weeks and months, there needs to be a serious review of our security procedures here at Virginia Tech, because this is extremely unsatisfactory. just had to get that out.
-from a disgruntled crew chief
11
lex
// Apr 16, 2007 at 8:26 pm
I’m so very sorry for your losses CrewDawg. There’s no words for it. Just sorry.
12
Justthisguy
// Apr 16, 2007 at 8:48 pm
The widely believed rumors had it, that our old wise grumpy wrinkled nasty Latin teacher in high school, Mrs. Reynolds, kept a revolver about her. Of course, that was in 1968.
I remember her grabbing a slightly porny book from someone, inspecting it carefully and tossing it. She then said something like
“If you want to read that kind of stuff in here, you’ll have to sign up for Latin III, and get it from Suetonius.”
She also described me as “the laziest white boy in Dade County.” I prefer to take that as kind of a left-handed compliment
13
Justthisguy
// Apr 16, 2007 at 9:15 pm
P.S. Oh yeah, sorry to seem so callous, if I did. Death is forever, AFAIK, not something you can undo, and I do miss horribly the formerly living people I knew, not least my parents. I just get so *angry* at the people who impose gun-free victim-rich zones!
Another thought: Back when I was in college (1968-1975) the intramural athletic system was seriously disrupted by the participation of the Veterans’ Club. Those guys were scary. Someone attempting something like this would not have done as much then and there, I think
14
Babs
// Apr 16, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I am terribly sorry for you Crewdawg. Really, not much else to say. God bless you, the survivors and the dead.
I will be praying that this doesn’t happen again anywhere… I don’t know what the answer is but, I sure would like to hear what the Cadets have to say about it.
15
Kris, in New England
// Apr 17, 2007 at 3:58 am
CrewDawg: I hope your unaccounted for friend was missing because he/she was helping others yesterday. Keeping you all in our thoughts.
So it would seem the question, among many, is: how do you notify possibly as many as 20,000 people about something like this? A dorm of nearly 1,000 was locked down…how do you lock down a campus of that size with that many incoming students & employees? What would have been the better method? Was there a better method? Or do we have to keep re-writing the rule books each time something like this happens? That is to say - how can you possibly be prepared for something of this nature?
16
friend of steger
// Apr 17, 2007 at 4:31 am
Having never posted on your website, I feel now is as good a time as any. I have been listening to all the talking heads this morning and I am appauled by the shear callous by which they choose to be the Monday Morning Quarterbacks yet again. How DO you notify 26,000 students and 7,000 faculty members and assure that each of them receives notification? NO ONE can proclaim a solution here. Is the next plan to “secure” each and every college campus in America with the Great Wall of China and hope you keep the bad guys off 2,600 acres?? That is not a solution. Oh wait, that’s right, this guy was a student.
Let’s think about security measures at University of Michigan or Ohio State and imagine “security” there.
My family knows the president of Tech very well. From everything I know, he is a wonderful man and his resume lives and breathes Tech for the last forty years. He has helped countless individuals on and off the campus. Let your thoughts be with him as well. I fear he will lose his job over this because, as we all know, someone has to be held responsible but it won’t be the shooter…or shooters. Geraldo Rivera will be sure of that.
17
Greg
// Apr 17, 2007 at 5:27 am
Crewdawg and any other fellow Hokies,
My thoughts and prayers are with you. I hope the missing Cadet is alright.
Greg Blankenship
class of 1999
18
badbob
// Apr 17, 2007 at 5:39 am
A lot of pain and powerlessness in here. I “feel” the same.
Unlike an attack by an identifiable organization like 9-11, this appears to be the act of one deranged, premeditated psychotic killer. Attack vs. tragedy. IMO, No policy or law can stop a whacko like this. All that can be done is respond and contain…My only specific question is why didn’t law enforcement storm the building when they could hear the shots inside?..It appears to me they were setting up SWAT for a siege/overwhelming assault. Time lost. I guess only Marines and our brave military runs to the sound of the guns anymore.
As we learn more in the coming days we can be assured that the proponents of the Nanny State will give us more of the same alluded to by Lex and others in here.
My only offering: I will venture a guess that those tactical video games played a part in this..even with a rudimentary knowledge of weapons backed up by enough clips, that HALO room clearing video games offer anybody with the inclination all the training they need to pull off something as heinous as this…I could go into more detail here, but believe me, like Gangsta Rap, they are not innocuous…
Why are they “legal”?
b2
19
Subsunk
// Apr 17, 2007 at 6:30 am
CAPT Lex,
I’m sorry. I have to agree with ASM826 here. And not even in the manner of requiring or accepting other handguns on the premises. If enough students will run towards a shooter to do him bodily harm, or run away from him to put space between them, instead of cower or wait to be shot, then the number of dead would be much lower. In an age when my father’s generation came home from war, folks who tried to do these things were met with aggressive action by unarmed or lightly armed citizens, only some of whom served in WWII. The country understood that violence in defense of one’s life was necessary.
I believe there are many things which we as civilized people could and should insist on seeing to improve security. But blaming a college administration (this is not their normal job… do we want them all trained to react with SWAT reflexes to every trivial eventuality?) for notifying 26,000 kids only via email about 2 hrs after an event occurred at 0715 doesn’t seem correct to me. This is not an unreasonable period of time to get out the word.
During our wargames, it frequently takes that long to get everyone not immediately on alert to get the initial sortie word. And as we all know, first reports are usually wrong or incomplete. Word continually gets garbled in transmission. And we are professionals who practice this every day. And what else could these college professors do? Take up paintball after hours?
The fix to terror in our midst is to stand up to it. Attack it wherever it rears its head, including in deranged Asian immigrants or South Side Snakehandlers, whomever they may be. Face the killers with determination and guts. The worst that could happen is that one dies while attempting to save another’s life, instead of waiting to give up one’s own life by simply hoping the killer passes by.
I know there are lots of folks who will disagree vehemently with me. Tough. Life is hard. Its harder if you are weak and stupid.
Subsunk
20
Albany Rifles
// Apr 17, 2007 at 7:00 am
Crew Dawg, from this Mountaineer, today everyone is a Hokie standing with you in your grief.
I have several friends with sons and daughters at VT to include my nexy door neighbor and 2 former members of my Scout troop. Heard most were okay; one among the injured: still unsure on a couple.
Lot of Monday Morning QB-ing…. As for sheep vs sheepdog mentality I have heard a lot on some blogs. I would say let us give this a rest until the full story comes out. Here in the local Richmond media we have heard about 2 students who held the door shut of one classrom to keep the gunman from entering. Also heard of another student who found a small office and moved his fellow classmates into it to safety.
21
craig mclaughlin
// Apr 17, 2007 at 7:10 am
“As for sheep vs sheepdog mentality I have heard a lot on some blogs. I would say let us give this a rest until the full story comes out.”
Hear, Hear.
22
Michelle
// Apr 17, 2007 at 8:14 am
Following the discussion here has been very enlightening for me. To Albany Rifles and Crew Dawg, I sincerely hope that all those close to you will come of out of this okay. And Lex, wow, life certainly is bizarre with its twists and turns, isn’t it? I am just grateful that things worked out as they did for you and your family. Not that that is of any assistance to those other families.
Having read the comments here, it was fascinating (as long as I could keep it all in the abstract) to hear the “spin” on the story on our local radio station. Which was that people were outraged that Virginia law “limited” individuals to purchasing “only” one gun per month. Which obviously leads to the conclusion that this tragedy occurred only because private citizens are allowed to own guns at all. That, obviously, would not be a popular conclusion around here.
Personally …. I don’t quite know where I stand on this issue. There are a lot of (seemingly) valid arguments on both sides. But its interesting how far “spin” influences our outlook. If I hadn’t come to the land of Lex or had decided not to stick around, then what I heard on the radio today (as an example) would obviously have had a big influence on my opinion. Having read all the discussion here, if nothing else, at least opens my mind up to the two differing viewpoints.
Having written all this, I just read Lex’s “Update 2″. I think I was trying to say something at least related to that, just in a much more long-winded way.
But beyond all this, it remains incomprehensible to me that these events seem to be occurring more and more often. Almost like its someone’s idea of a giant game. Its frightening to think along the lines of “what our world is coming to” and its terrifying as a parent to comtemplate sending your child out to make their way in the world. But maybe the worst thing of all is the realization that none of us really seem to have much of a handle on “what to do about it”.
23
lex
// Apr 17, 2007 at 8:36 am
Here’s thing Michelle - the state cannot protect your from these kinds of crime. Not mine, not yours. At best, they will find and punish perpetrators, with the hope that such punishment might act as a deterrent to others - not much benefit when a lunatic intends to take his own life, along with all those innocents.
Certainly these kind of acts are random, and any individual’s odds of being victimized like this are vanishingly small, but that’s small consolation to 32 families who have seen a brilliant possibility extinguished for no comprehensible reason.
Having conceded that the state cannot protect you, it offends many of us that elements within the state deny us the opportunity to protect ourselves.
Maybe there would be more crime if every qualified citizen went armed. Maybe there would be more murderous acts of momentary rage to regret. But the evidence of states and localities with liberal ownership laws and concealed carry rights points the other way.
And I will just point out that the most polite and inoffensive people I meet in daily life are found on the local shooting range.
24
Michelle
// Apr 17, 2007 at 9:05 am
Well, if nothing else, I have come to realize that not all gun-toters or gun-shooters are quite the right wing scary rednecks that some would make them out to be
In fact, I count some among my closest friends (you know who you are) and others as online “friends” that have definitely enriched my life.
25
GEO6
// Apr 17, 2007 at 11:49 am
Michelle,
The very vast majority of law-abiding gun owners south of the border know that the ability to use deadly force comes with great responsibility and a profound restraint in exercising that ability. I also suggest that many, if not all of us, believe it is a natural right to defend oneself and one’s family/friends. As Lex so eloquently addresses this, there are those in the state that would constrain or completely block that right. They would have it the only right you can have is to be a victim and their right to “feel” good about eliminating handguns and assault rifles trumps your right to protect yourself. Those who carry a concealed firearm must completely understand the ROE (both legal and moral) if and when this deadly force can be used.
Also like Lex, those folks I know who carry, and there are more than a few, are gentlemen and ladies, self-confident and not given to any inclination to prove anything to anyone, sort of like those who are masters of any particular martial art. Then again, those are the types of people I like to associate with.
Lastly, I again want to give my heartfelt condolences to CrewDawg and all the others going thru this tragedy. Prayer line is engaged.
26
unkawill
// Apr 17, 2007 at 11:52 am
“I have come to realize that not all gun-toters or gun-shooters are quite the right wing scary rednecks that some would make them out to be.”
Well said Michelle, now please spread it around.
“Having conceded that the state cannot protect you, it offends many of us that elements within the state deny us the opportunity to protect ourselves.”
Too true Cap’n, at least we don’t have that problem down here in Texas.
My Dad shot a burglar in the ass as he was walking out the front door with an armload of stuff, and held his partner at gunpoint till the police arrived. Mom was backing him up with the twelve gage. The cops thanked them and shook their hands, and they also got a positive write up in the local paper!
27
Bill C
// Apr 17, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Several years ago , in counties west of the Denver area, gambling casino’s were permitted. People were also allowed to carry guns. Not concealed but right on the hip.
All manner of crime went down. You have to be really dim to try and mug a man packing a holstered 44.
28
Greg
// Apr 18, 2007 at 4:45 am
All,
Here is the memorial message board that VT has established for those who wish to express their feelings about the shootings. Thanks.
http://www.ee.unirel.vt.edu/index.php/memorial
29
Justthisguy
// Apr 18, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I left some words there, Greg. I hope and pray that they cause a bit of comfort against the hurt.
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