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As I write, our son is on his way home from Iraq. We have prayed constantly for his safety while he has been in combat.
You just don't' think of having to worry about your kids getting shot when you send them to college as opposed to a war zone.
Are there more crazy peop;e out there than ever before or are we just hearing about it more?
Notwithstanding, our campuses are generally very safe places for our children. I am stunned by this attack, and I grieve for the victims and their families.
@Mac: I don't think there are more crazy people, rather I think people are less able to defend themselves. VPI is, after all, a gun free zone. I hope someone else got the bastard and he didn't get off easy doing it himself.
The above is a preview of what we can all expect to hear in the next few days and beyond on this.
I think it's a little early to be making political points on the story. Right now it's just an awful tragedy, pure and simple.
Congrats on being the first with sarcastic political remarks about the death of over 20 people. You must be proud.
Readers point to campus ban on self-defense
No, he's apparently Asian. They're going to say Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft made him do it.
A few years ago, while I was at VPI (or possibly soon after) a law student at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia did something similar (though I understand he had a long gun and this shooter used two 9mm pistols), killing a dean and one student.
I carry a gun just about anywhere that I legally can, precisely because, to quote Cesare Beccaria, the Enlightenment thinker who started Europe and America away from torture and at least reduced the use of capital punishment:
True, making such statements is part of the Brady Campaign's day job and, I take it, not part of Brian G's. Still, we know that the public policy questions implicated by the tragedy are going to be much on many people's minds, and legitimately so. While I wouldn't start the discussion where Brian G did, I can't much condemn him (or the Brady Campaign) for raising the subject, either.
Do you think that a bunch of "untrained civilians" running around campus for two hours would have killed 32 people?
-VT '04, '06
Would allowing people to be armed there have changed anything? I don't know. What I know is that current laws banning weapons obtained when this incident occurred (and the other one I mentioned above). I don't think, had there been civilians with weapons available, the outcome would have been *worse*.
I assume Virginia Tech has an armed police force. And I am sure the local and state police were also called in. In a situation like this it is very possible that civilians with guns would be misidentified by the police as threats and quite possibly become victims of police bullets. Additionally, civilians could quite possibly shoot innocent bystanders or even other "armed citizens" who were also trying to prevent additional deaths. In a hostage situation someone trying to save the day could definitely lead to unnecessary deaths.
There are a myriad of situations, where a gun drawn by a person who does not have a full understanding of the situation could make matters much worse. That's why the police don't automatically just go rushing in when they arrive on the scene. Its also why they have a single commander. It's called unity of command, and its what you strive to achieve so you don't have people going off half-cocked (pun intended) and getting themselves or others unnecessarily harmed.
But J.F. Thomas didn't even manage to pick on the real problem--what happens if guns are available when there isn't a murderer on campus. He picked the most unlikely scenario for widespread gun ownership to be a problem.
(I've got news for you: few people, whether they have guns or not, are going to "run around looking for the shooter." They're going to hide, because except in people whose view of guns is limited to what they see from Hollywood, nobody wants armed shootouts. The point is for people who are actually being confronted by a gunman to be able to defend themselves.)
If you had wanted to make a legitimate point rather than your silly one about "brandishing," you might have argued that police might accidentally shoot the wrong person if lots of people have guns. That's a legitimate concern -- but it mostly applies in our current environment, in which guns are demonized such that people with guns are assumed to be abnormal and something to react to.
That's why you keep your gun concealed until you actually need it.Again: do you honestly think that civilians being armed today would have made things worse? Worse than 32 dead?
This is definitely true, and why concealed weapon permitholders in many states have to go through training. My training in California emphasized uncertain situations like this. But if you are in a classroom, and someone comes in, and starts shooting your classmates, this is only ambiguous to you.
And tell me how if two or three students, faculty, or staff had been armed today (and that's about the odds of it being so, if there were no rule against it), how this would have resulted in more deaths than 32?
There is a real argument that could be advanced against this, but you don't even know enough to make that argument intelligently.
I'm making a lot of assumptions! It is people like Clayton, Paranoid (with a pseudonym like that do you really think he should be carrying a gun), and Brian G who automatically assumed that if people were allowed to carry guns at Virginia Tech, this would have never happened. And I just love the leap that knowledge that people carry guns is going to deter a crazy and apparently suicidal person from going forward with his plans.
I am just providing just as reasonable a scenario before you get all carried away with your what-ifs.
Clayton, you are all about dishonest arguments. Virginia Tech's policy had nothing to do with this. There were armed police on campus and they couldn't stop them. The few armed civilians that you are sure would have been there if not for Tech's policy wouldn't have made a difference either.
So now you are going from saying students and faculty carrying would have prevented the tragedy to not making a difference at all.
Look, if you happened to be an ordinary civilian carrying a pistol around the Virginia Tech campus this morning, rationally, the dumbest thing for you to have done would have been to draw it and go looking for the shooter. I don't see how anyone else, especially police responding to vague descriptions of one or more gunmen roaming the campus, could have known you weren't a bad guy. You would have been shot to death and we would be hearing about the mysterious second gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy.
Maybe if you were right there facing the guy down, you might have made a difference. Maybe.
--Abe Delnore
You do have to worry about being stabbed, however. I live near Boise, which has about 250,000 in the metropolitan area. Our murder rates compare favorably to any city in Scotland of comparable size. It has a lot to do with the culture of violence and alcohol.
@J.F. Thomas: I don't think you're actually trying to engage this issue, so I think I am done here. What I am saying is that these shootings tend to happen in places where normal, law-abiding persons are without access to the means to defend themselves. I think that allowing such access might be a deterrent on the margin (as you say, we are dealing with someone who is irrational and already willing to violate the prohibition against murder, so the prohibition against guns is simply ignored). I am more certain that allowing access to weapons would make it more likely that a person trained with using a weapon would be present to possibly end something like this before 32 people die.
You are assuming that everyone with a gun is a scared maniac without the ability to use the weapon or to know what to do. That's nonsense, and it is especially nonsense in the context of Virginia Tech. A goodly number of students are on the G.I. Bill at any state school, and Virginia Tech has the Corps of Cadets as well, the vast majority of whom already have military training. I trust those people more than I trust your opinion of what is likely to happen, and I don't think we will be able to change each others' minds on the issue.
Where did I say "this would never have happened"? In fact, my argument was that it might have provided an opportunity to stop it before the body count got so high--and even then, I have been careful to emphasize that because of the age of the population and the political persuasion, we should not be overly confident. Scroll up to where I wrote: "The fact is that if Virginia Tech didn't have a ban, it might not have helped."
Where did I say that? There are crimes that widespread gun carrying seems to deter, but they are typically rape and violent crimes associated with robbery. Someone who intends suicide at the end is undeterrable. They can be stopped before they run up the body count, however.
Hint: do mass murderers go looking for uniformed police officers to shoot at? Why not?
There only has to be one armed civilian in the classroom where the killer goes to make a difference.
At the very start of this, I wrote: "The fact is that if Virginia Tech didn't have a ban, it might not have helped." Learn to read.
You are the one who insisted that it would have made things worse--and I pointed out how it could not have done so. Are you really so deficient in your ability to remember what you wrote?
Except no one proposed going out looking for the killer. The argument is that the ban on carry permit holders being armed on campus meant that the killer could be quite sure that none of his victims could shoot back.
Everyday, when I wake up, I thank God that our children and my spouse are alive and well, at least as far as I know since daughter is off on her own and son was in Iraq. Everyday we have our health and our loved one's; it is a gift. We just never know. I think, but don't know, that this would be harder than losing a child in combat. I was painfully aware each hour of each day of the danger he was in. Perhaps once a month, I would bring out my greatest fear and examine it. This was that there would be a knock on the door and I would find two uniformed Marines there to tell me that my son had been killed. I don't even know if they still do that or if I watched too many old war movies. I assume that they do. I have had to prepare myself for the possibility, at least.
I think it may be even harder, if someone told me my daughter had been killed in random violence. It would be "out of the blue". Other than the knowledge that something can always happen, that is not something you can really prepare for.
Here in Prescoitt, 5 or 6 Emory-Riddle students went out hiking one fine night with a full moon. They were doing nothing illegal, immoral or unethical. In fact, what they were doing was healthy and wholesome. Yet, a rock that had been in place for hundreds if not thousands of years, suddenly broke lose and rolled down on the student in the middle, killing him. That is so hard to comprehend as well. Of the six, why him? He was 21 and very alive and then gone. I don't have any answers. I am just grateful that in a few days my son will be home.
Today, I only have to worry about the "normal" dangers of life as he travels home, like plane crashes and car wrecks. It is nice to go back to the usual and not worry about him getting shot down in his chopper or killed or shot in a crash of same chopper or heaven forbid that he would be captured. However, today, the "normal" worries are many people's worst nightmare. My heart goes out to them.
No one has said the civilians with guns would start running around the campus like little Jack Bauers--except the anti-gun commenters. One student with a gun inside a lecture hall could protect the whole hall if the gunman opened the door and started firing.
You do have to worry about being stabbed, however. I live near Boise, which has about 250,000 in the metropolitan area. Our murder rates compare favorably to any city in Scotland of comparable size. It has a lot to do with the culture of violence and alcohol.
I do agree that perhaps the rates of knife crime are higher than that of where you live. However, is it really possible to compare these on the same level....gun weilding maniac's who could easily kill someone from a distance, or someone weilding a knife whom would have to get very close and thus it would be possible to put up resistance,even fight back, plus remember in order to escape it would be easier to outrun a knife rather than a bullet.
Perhaps the drinking culture is partly to blame, i don't know of the "violent" culture which you claim, perhaps it appears like that from the short clips you may see of Scotland but i can assure you this is not the case. I would happily walk through my nearby park at midnight without a care in teh world. I could scarcely say the same if i lived in America, could I?
I see your point of view, but the point i was trying to make was that why are Americans so passionate about gun's when they cause so much harm? I would rather ban gun's and fancy my chances with a knife personally. Is it not the case that after all of these terrible astocities that have happened in schools and universities, perhaps it would be more wise to just ban the gun. I hear that in some states schools now employ the use of metal detectors, this surely is a sorry state for "the greatest nation of the world" to have to come to?
Do you not agree that perhaps gun's are bad and should be left to the battlefield, before "our" (your) streets become the battle zones with inner city gangs and gun culture. With gun's so easily obtained at the local supermaket (Which i think is unbelievable) how do Americans expect to curb such crime and killings? I cant imagine being able to go to my local supermarket and to pick up a loaf of bread and then a gun? it beyond belief!
This is a problematic argument because you are short of data.
Is there any evidence that allowing citizens to carry guns into all sorts of places either deters this sort of violence or else results in self-help that cuts short such killing sprees?
Utah's gun laws are such that just about adult can get a concealed carry permit, municipal governments can't enact their own gun control laws, and owners of venues such as restaurants, shopping centers, theaters, etc. can prevent people carrying weapons on their property. Yet not many months ago a gunman entered Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and started killing people. Remember, just about any adult in that mall could have been carrying a concealed weapon. The only armed response came from an off-duty cop, who to my thinking quite heroically sought out and engaged the gunman with his sidearm even though he had only one magazine. Then just a few minutes later the police arrived and shot the gunman to death.
Utah's gun laws, which certainly favor self-defense, failed to deter the gunman. They also seem to have failed to encourage anyone to either carry a gun or use it against the gunman. I think the people who commit these kinds of crimes are effectively undeterrable. They know they are going to die and are just looking for people to kill in the meantime.
Meanwhile, to reach the level of gun ownership that would put a pistol in every classroom and dorm hall--that is, enough guns in the hands of ordinary citizens that self-defense might occur--I imagine you would either have mandate that certain people carry guns, or else be in a society where people felt so unsafe that they went out and bought guns for protection. Neither strikes me as desirable.
What are you reading or watching about American firearm sales? I think it may be a bit over the top.
I live in American and I own quite a few guns (I'm a collector). I've never bought one at a supermarket. I've never seen one for sale at a supermarket, either.
I suppose Wal-Mart might qualify in some instances. But if you're not familiar with Wal-Mart, it's actually kind of difficult to call it a supermarket, even if it does sell food. It's really just every store rolled up into one.
To my knowledge no supermarket chain in the U.S., as we think of that term, sells guns.
Anyway, the VAST majority of Americans go about their daily lives, shopping and otherwise, without EVER seeing a gun for sale. It simply is not the case that you can buy them anywhere. The record-keeping requirements for 01 FFLs (gun dealers) are onerous and violations are punished quite harshly; the vast majority of businesses have no interest in complying with such laws.
Incidentally, it is not necessarily difficult to buy a gun in the U.S., depending on what you're buying and where you are, but it's much harder than buying a loaf of bread.
So wal-mart do in fact sell guns? That is my prime point.From my culture, and what is reported on the news....walmart is the worlds biggest "supermarket chain", thus if it sells guns to me that is a very strange concept. We have stores that sell everything - tesco, asda (which coincidently is owned by walmart) and i cannot see the scenario of being able to buy a gun in one.
Fair point on the difficulties of buying a gun, but i was just merely pointing out that it appears to us Brits that you can go to the Walmart and buy one. We have no concept of even being able to buy a gun from a specialist so it admittidly is much harder for me to understand. But still, I mean its still possible to buy your loaf and a gun in the same place, strange concept to me.
Actually, I posted my remarks out of anger, not sarcasm. Perhaps I made the mistake of listening to a local talk show where people were calling and whining about that we don't have enough gun control to prevent something like this.
In retrospect, I should not have posted anything. I apologize to all.
More to the point, I believe SOME of our Wal-Marts sell long guns (rifles, shotguns), but I do not think they sell handguns. At least the ones around here don't.
Come to think of it, I suppose it IS kind of strange that you can buy tires, pickles, a charcoal grill, a TV, and a shotgun in the same store. How I do love this country.
I think any fair minded person understands that, Brian. It is a very normal reaction to try to make sense of the senseless and to be angry about it.
About 80% of shootings in the U.S. take place at a distance of 21 feet. How long does it take someone running to cross a distance of 6.5 meters with a knife? You aren't anywhere near as safe from a knife-wielding attacker as you think. Nor are knives necessarily that much less deadly. In the U.S., about 5% of knife attacks are deadly; about 10% of handgun attacks are deadly.
You might want to talk to the Scottish government about this. I keep reading articles in British newspapers about Scotland's culture of alcohol and knives. That's part of why the traditional sword dance there can't be done with real swords anymore. That's why there was some discussion a while back of whether to ban sale of butcher knives in Scotland.
It depends where you live. In Boise, yes, you could. And the only state gun control laws we have are the one requiring a permit to carry concealed. Open carry of handguns? It isn't common in Boise, but it is not only legal, but the courts have ruled that it is protected by the state constitution. Machine guns? There's federal paperwork to complete (which is long and somewhat expensive, but not prohibitive), but there is no state regulatory process for it.
We have had a murder story on the front page of the local paper for over a week now. It is the same story--one disturbed young man who murdered two people, one in Moscow, Idaho, about six hours north of here, and another here in Boise. Many parts of America have murder rates comparable to, or superior to Scotland.
One example from Utah where it didn't work doesn't mean all that much. No one is claiming that making permits easier to get is a foolproof solution, because only about 3-5% of the population gets permits to carry concealed, and a fair number don't carry consistently. In the Colonial period, as my new book Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie (Nelson Current, 2007), many colonies solved this problem by requiring most men to carry a gun when traveling, attending church, or other public meetings.
December 1997: Fourteen-year-old boy kills three students in Kentucky
March 1998: Two boys, 11 and 13, kill four girls and a teacher in Arkansas
April 1998: A teacher is killed and two students wounded in Pennsylvania
May 1998: 15 year-old shoots dead two students in school cafeteria in Oregon
June 1998: Two adults hurt in shooting by teenager at high school in Virginia
April 1999: Two teenagers shoot dead 12 students and a teacher before killing themsleves in Columbine School in Colarado
May 1999: Student injures six pupils in a shoot-out in Georgia
November 1999: Thirteen-year-old girl shot dead by classmate in New Mexico
February 2000: Six-year-old girl shot dead by a classmate in Michigan
March 2001: Pupil opens fire at a school in California, killing two students
April 2003: Teenager shoots dead head teacher at a Pennsylvania school, then kills himself
May 2004: Four people injured in shooting at a school in Maryland
March 2005: Minnesota schoolboy kills nine, tehn shoots himself
Novemeber 2005: Student in Tennessee shoots dead an assistant principal and wounds two other administrators
September 2006: Funman in Colorado kills a schoolgirl, then kills himself. Two days later a tennager kills the head teacher of a school in Wisconsin
October 2006: A 32-year-old gunman kills five girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, before killing himself
April 2007: A gunman shoots dead 33 people at the campus of Virginia Tech University in Virginia
I think the figures speak for themselves!
for example.
japan has a MUCH higher suicide rate than we do.
and the VAST majority of their suicides are committed without guns.
why do they have A higher suicide rate? clearly, guns (non-availability ) is irrelevant.
it's CULTURE.
they have a MUCH lower homicide rate than we do.
see: above.
japanese AMERICANS have a similarly higher suicide rate than the population at large. guess what? many of these suicides ARE committed with guns. why? cause they are available.
also note that japanese americans have a VERY low homicide rate.
gungrabbers also love to bring up england etc. (note that england has a horrendous crime rate - much higher than the US - but a relatively low murder rate). what about switzerland? Israel? both countries with very high gun ownership and very low homicide (domestic homicide. i'm not counting terrorist attacks- which are mostly bombs not guns btw)