Virginia Tech Massacre - 32 Shot Dead by 1 Man
 

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16 — Thirty-two people were killed, along with a gunman, and at least 15 injured in two shooting attacks at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on Monday during three hours of horror and chaos on this sprawling campus.

The police and witnesses said some victims were executed with handguns while other students were hurt jumping from upper-story windows of the classroom building where most of the killings occurred. After the second round of killings, the gunman killed himself, the police said.

It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history and came nearly eight years to the day after 13 people died at Columbine High School in Colorado at the hands of two disaffected students who then killed themselves.

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Taken from the Drudge Report.

What can possibly posses someone to execute 32 people in one day?

Thoughts. I can't add anything else to this than express my shock at the sheer evilness of it.

that bloke is the scum of the earth.
HE only went on the massarcer because his girlfreind dumped him so he took out 2 pistols and an ungodly ammount of ammo and lined up pepple and killed them by a wall

makes me sick
they should ban guns in the U.S.A

Right, because criminals are going to just come right up and hand in their firearms in the name of the law! Certainly, this will not result in only criminals keeping their guns and then using them against defenseless innocents! Let us use a policy that oh so coincidentially has been associated with virtually every totalitarian regime in history (Not trying to pull reductio ad Hitlerum here)!

After seeing it on the news, I knew someone would make a thread about it.

What I think is stupid is how 2 hours before the main shooting 2 students got shot but the staff didn't tell anyone because they were afraid that everyone was going to panic.

The guy must've had a motive. And I want to know what it is. I mean, you don't just decide to one day kill 32 people. You'd have to plan it out, which this bastard obviously did.

Well, you can't really blame them. How would you react to an annoncement from the staff saying "Everyone, two students have just been shot"?

And Bush went extremely defensive when people claimed that the law that's about weapon-possession should be looked into: "If people would only follow that law, there wouldn't be any problems."

Well, that's more or less what he claimed.

Seems like not everyone is happy to follow that law. Stupid Bush...

I don't think it's such a stretch as to why someone would do this.

Anyway, yeah, not to make light of this situation but: guns are bad, should be banned, etc.

Perhaps we should make this a seperate discussion but the fewer legal firearms there are around today, the fewer illegal ones there will be in five years.

In any case, if you look at shootings like this, most have been done with legal firearms. If you make it harder for people to get guns, the crazies will have less to work with.

Why does this always primarily happen in the USA? Is there something in the air supply in those schools that makes people grab a gun and randomly kill people or something?
In any case, people like this should be dead, minor inconvenience that he happened to take 32 others with him...

Havoc

The killer doesn't deserve a proper burial after what he did.

I think that, when two students are dead and the guy gets away, everyone had a right to panic.

Why didn't they lock it down? Why weren't there evacuations?
I'll tell you why. Virginia Tech isn't some podunk little welding "college" okay, its got nearly 30,000 people on it on any given day. Chances are VT is bigger than the city you live in. You try calmly evacuating that and notifying everyone on campus of what is going on. Unless Superman gets involved nothing will ever stop a determined gunman from plugging people.

[devil's advocate]
Guns will never be banned in America.

Even if they were to be banned, the decree would just be another law waiting to be broken. Murders by stabbing are also illegal, and that certainly doesn't stop anyone from burying a shiv deep in some poor guy's chest for a couple bucks.
[/devil's advocate]

...

Personally, I have mixed feelings about guns. Realistically, banning guns would almost certainly reduce crime and murder rates, but what of the scores of people out there that hunt for sport or use guns for other recreational purposes?

Hell, even I've been known to go out for some target practice every now and then.

Still, despite all of this, America would most likely be a better place without guns.

Even if guns were banned in America, criminals would still have their ways of acquiring them. Meaning that, all someone would have to do to get their hands on a weapon, is talk to a local gang member, which would make the situation worse.

You'll all probably think I'm crazy for saying this, but if everyone had some sort of firearm, crime rates would drop significantly. Criminals, would not want to take the chance of getting shot themselves, if everyone were armed.

Actualy I think oppisit.
If there was a armed robbery at a conveinece store were the theif pointed a pistol at the cashier. Then the casheir points one back, it would make one of them more temted to shoot because thay are being threatened.

Also if there were some vilont people who could get quite aggresive [like bouncers, who do anoth damage with there battons as it is] they probaly would pull out a gun and shoot. rather than a less dangerous fist fight.

Oh my science this stuff is scary.
I used to walk through that college's campus every day to get to school, thank Odd I moved closer so I didn't have to be there. O.o

If everyone were to carry a weapon, that scenario wouldn't even happen. Think about it. You're a criminal and a law allowing all citizens to carry weapons is in effect. You want to rob a convience store. Would you risk going in there, pulling a gun on the owner, and having your head blown off by either the cashier, or someone else who just happens to be at the store? I don't think so.

If everyone had guns it would still be more risky. someone could acidently knock the trigger. or someone could miss and hit someone else. That also means that there would be more accidents whilst cleaning guns.

Guns have safety for a reason, ya goose. And how would you miss and hit someone else? If someone wasn't certain if they could hit someone, I doubt they'd shoot at all.

thats quite true snuzi
i remeber reading in the darwin awards when a man with a small revolver tried to rob a gun store when there were other Gun weilding customers there.
needless to say he had more holes in him than swiss cheese

You are crazy, or incredibly stupid. That's the kind of floored logic - that enabling the common people to have access to ways to defend themselves against the things they'd use to defend themselves - that usually crops up. Along with some bizarre notion that the freedom of owning a firearm is a 'right'. Luckily here in England some semblance of the greater good is being kept.

It may seem crazy or stupid, but it works, believe it or not. In Switzerland, just about anyone over 18 is allowed to carry a firearm, and their murder rates are unbelieveably low, ranging from 5 or 6 per year. I'm not saying that guns should be handed out to individuals with a history of violence, or people under the age of 18, but I am saying that if criminals knew that someone they were planning on attacking or stealing from is, more likely than not, armed, then they would think twice before taking the risk.

This is absolute madness. No body over there can be trusted with a gun....

PS i'm back...wooooooo

Heh. I just came back to edit out my 'incredibly stupid' comment, I was being far too snarky. Or rude, as we call it down my way.

Anyway, I still don't buy it, simply because it seems so utterly daft and just a pure piece of conjecture.

Switzerland is tiny, remember, I'd be surprised if they had reams of murders being committed. Added to this is the fact the Swiss are all existentialist fence-sitters, who are all destined for a career in banking.

If everyone over 18 had a gun that would be like handing fire-arms to gangs. O.o
Also not everyone with a gun would be proficient with it, I also see many more accidents occurring. I'm sure a man who didn't know how to use a gun would use it if he thought he would be saving human life.
Say two young guys get in a fight, well instead of fighting each other with fists and only beating each other up they would both pull out guns... this doesn't look good at all.

Oxymoron #27: Gun safety.

Someone who has gotten to the point of engaging in armed robbery isn't exactly going to be worrying about little details like that

Again, people planning on attacking or stealing from someone are not going to be thinking twice at all, or they would not be doing it in the first place. And then when they are faced with an armed opponent suddenly, well, everyone knows what happens when you surprise a gun-wielding criminal. Besides, Switzerland have low rates of all antisocial behaviour. This is a place where lost wallets containing large amounts of cash are invariably handed in to the authorities with all contents intact.

There is a basic dynamic that takes place when you arm both the predator and prey. We see it in nature. This is the part of evolution that will lead to ever faster prey animals to escape from their ever faster predators. The same goes for body size. If you are going to attack a place known to be protected, you're going to make sure that you have a bigger, stronger arsenal than your target. And as the equipment of the local criminals becomes more outlandish, so does that of law abiding citizens. And we can see where this is going.

Nevertheless, I feel that if such a law was passed, it may just change the mind set of criminals permanently.

I don't think a man would pull a gun out if he didn't know how to use it. He would first make sure that he did know how to use one well enough, before deciding to use one in order to stop an armed robbery or something.

Also, if such a law was put into effect, parents would most likely be teaching their children gun safety at an earlier age, to better prepare them for when they are old enough to wield one. This would mean that they would have a more realistic approach when it came to firearms, rather than the children who see a movie where weapons are involved, and say "Oooh, cool! I wish I could do that!". So, the whole fight scenario would be less likely to happen. Partly because the two individuals involved would know better than to let a petty arguement escalate into a gun battle, and partly because they'd be afraid of someone else pulling a weapon on them both to stop them.

Actually it depends on the person. If we're dealing with a psychopath, then of course not, though I think even they would think twice before risking death just because they got a little greedy.

If there's a greater possibility of them dying in the process, then they would think twice about it. I highly doubt that their desire for money would cloud their judgement to that extent.

And if the criminals were to wield lareger, more powerful weapons, the chances of them being caught before they get a chance to commit the crime would increase drammatically. What's more, in a country where all citizens are allowed to wield firearms, I imagine that there'd be more law enforcement officials at every corner as a precautionary measure.

Hmm.... Damn... why is it America that always does this?
Maybe it's because everyone else is on T.V., so they want to be too... who knows.



Anyways, this (I'd like to say) is shocking (I don't know... America is turning into a bigger pothole each passing day...). Biggest school shooting in U.S.A. history... That's amazing. That's completely insane. That's so incredible it's stupid...

Yet another prime example of why the planet would benifet without stupid people...

The assailant was not stupid. If he was, he wouldn't have killed 32 freaking people.

Really? If he had the nerve to go out and kill 32 people, he is missing something in the attic isn't he? Sure he isn't necessarily stupid, but killing others for almost no apparent reason is just mindless killing. I should have been a bit more specific than...

The world would be better without un-caring Psychotic killers and stupid people...