31 Dead In University Shootings

[jamiebk]

While I agree with you Haggis, the fact of it is that no one can determine who is safe to carry a gun and who is not (beyond convicted criminals and institutionalized mental patients. Cho got the Glock legally. There is no telling whether any of the students who were shot at could have/would have stopped him even if they were armed themselves. I doubt that Cho even thought about consequences when he began his rampage...he fully intended to shoot himself anyway.

The only thing that could have stopped Cho from doing what he intended on doing would maybe have been preventative counselling.

But really, I don't think there is any way to stop someone insane from doing what they intend to do?

I agree with you....

[Shapley]

Based on accounts of what happened, I think it is clear that the killer was very concerned about the consequences - he wanted to make sure that everyone he wanted dead was dead before he ended his own life. Survivors report that he had looked into classrooms before he went on his spree as if he were looking for someone. It seems that he wanted to know where certain individuals were. He chained the doors shut to ensure that he would not be interrupted until his intended victims had been killed. As Haggis' link points out, he had no fear of weapons within the building, only from those that would enter from outside.

Having just one more armed person inside that building could have made a lot of difference, either by killing or wounding the killer before his number of victims was so high, or by offering sufficient resistance that the killer took his own life early, before completing the intended killings of all those whose lives he apparently sought to end. As it is, the killer knew he had all the time he needed.

Meanwhile, it seems this attack was not total surprise to those who knew the killer. Of what use are all these warning signs to people who can't, or won't read them?

V/R
Shapley

[jamiebk]

It seemed also that campus "security" was very ineffective. They certainly need more and better armed campus police protection.

PS...no one said the guy was dumb. Clearly insane (disturbed), but smart enough to pre-mediate his plan and carry out his actions in a cunning manner.

[piqaboo]

Shap, can you expound on your warning signs statement?

The folks who wrote Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and all the Halloween and Nightmare on Elm St movies are still around, and have not gone on shooting rampages. For that matter, neither has Ray Bradbury.
Are you saying writing scary material should force immediate psychiatric evaluation?

(If my kid were writing stuff that scared her teachers, I'd certainly want to be notified, even if my kid were legally an adult. I dont think there's any law that would prevent it. But inertia most likely would. Much easier to call campus police. Unfortunately, their job is more to catch criminals than prevent crime).

Police searched Cho’s dorm room Tuesday and recovered, among other items, a chain and a combination lock, according to documents filed Wednesday. The front doors of Norris Hall, the classroom building, had been chained shut from the inside during the shooting rampage.

Other items that were seized included a folding knife; two computers, a hard disk and other computer disks; documents, books, notebooks and other writings; a digital camera; compact disks; and two Dremel tools, which are rotating tools used for cutting, sanding and other applications

If these are warning signs, we're all in for it, especially treebeau & barfle, I suspect.

[treebeau]

But was it a CORDLESS Dremel ???

Regards,
Tim B.

[Shapley]

Piq,

He had two incidents of reported stalking of female students. (I wonder if one, or both, of those students were among his victims, the news accounts have not stated)

He was was taken to a mental health facility in 2005 at his parents' request for fear that he was suicidal. (In some states, this would have been sufficient to prevent him from being able to legally acquire a firearm without a hearing.)

He had so upset other instructors that Virginia Tech officials asked whether the professor wanted protection. Lucinda Roy declined. She thought Cho Seung Hui exuded loneliness, and she volunteered to teach him by herself, to spare her colleagues. The subject of the class was poetry.

... Cho took pictures of fellow students during class and wrote about death, she said in an interview. "Kids write about murder and suicide all the time. But there was something that made all of us pay attention closely. None of us were comfortable with that," she said.

...Days later, seven of Giovanni's 70 or so students showed up for a class. She asked them why the others didn't show up and was told that they were afraid of Cho.

"Once I realized my class was scared, I knew I had to do something," she said.

She approached Cho and told him that he needed to change the type of poems he was writing or drop her class. Giovanni said Cho declined to leave and said, "You can't make me."

Giovanni said she appealed to Roy, who then taught Cho one-on-one. Roy, 51, said in a telephone interview that she also urged Cho to seek counseling and told him that she would walk to the counseling center with him. He said he would think about it.

These are from another link, here

It appears there was more to what was going on in his writing than Freddy Krueger and [/i]Duke Nuke-em[/i], although we are not made privy to it directly. Some of it may be posted on a website somewhere, but I have no desire to look for it.

I haven't advocated a specific course of action based on these warning signs, I was just pointing out that they reportedly existed. Teachers made an effort to find out, counselors have seen him, as have the police. Still, 32 people are dead along his path to suicide. I can't say the signs were all ignored, but clearly the warnings weren't sufficient for eonugh people to act to prevent or limit the destruction he wrought. Perhaps these warning signs were part of the move behind the legisilation that was defeated in 2006, which sought to allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms on campus. I have no idea. I only know that, according to reports by people who knew him, there was little surprise when his name was released as being the killer.

V/R
Shapley

Oh, and there's this:

Roy said she warned school officials. "I was determined that people were going to take notice," Roy said. "I felt I'd said to so many people, 'Please, will you look at this young man?' "

Roy, now the alumni distinguished professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program, said university officials were responsive and sympathetic to her warnings but indicated that because Cho had made no direct threats, there was little they could do.

"I don't want to be accusatory or blaming other people," Roy said. "I do just want to say, though, it's such a shame if people don't listen very carefully and if the law constricts them so that they can't do what is best for the student."

[Nicole Marie]

I don't think writing nutty stories is a warning sign. The true warning signs were the treatment of female students and female professors. I saw an interview with one of his female professors - she stated that he was very combative in class towards her and she told the head of the department that if he was not removed from her class she was going to quit. Add in his harassment of the two female students who filed complaints and his roommates said he would make up relationships. They told campus security that he would make up in his head imaginary relationships he was having with women on campus. He also threatened to kill himself a few times. This guy was very sick and the university should have acted quicker with dealing with his mental health issues. These are all big warning signs. Then of course this sicko gets a gun...

[Nicole Marie]

Shap - The women who filed complaints were not killed. He would fixate on random women on campus according to his past roommates. There seems to be no connection with who he went after. He seems to have snapped. Reports say he was working out for hours in the school gym and had asked people to call him "Question Mark". Yes... "?" When a classmate asked him why he started to scream at her in class. He should have been pulled from the University a long time ago.

[Shapley]

Thank you, Nicole.

There were probably better links I could have used to reference the warning signs, there have been dozens of articles about them in the last few hours.

Here in Illinois, having been to a mental health facility for various reasons, and potential suicide is one of them, will restrict a person from purchasing a firearm. They can purchase one lawfully, but only after a hearing has been conducted to determine if they are threat to society. I believe this usually consists of little more than an statement from the psychological staff sent to a judge, who then determines whether to issue or decline the permit.

It's not a perfect system, but it is designed to try to balance the need to protect society against a individuals right to keep and bear arms.

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

Shap - The women who filed complaints were not killed.

Thanks again. I had merely noticed that were a significant number of women in the profile of his victims. Most of the males seem to be upper classmen, professors, or teaching assistants, while most of the females seem to be younger. I do not believe the selection was as random as is being suggested, although I'm sure not all were specific targets. Hopefully,
further study will provide some clues.

[piqaboo]

He got released after evaluation so he'd probably have gotten a 'not suicidal' note from the facility. And then he'd have gotten his gun, but he'd have been mad at even more people.

As one professor learned, she couldnt compell him to counseling.
Although it might be possible for a university to make counseling a mandatory prerequisite for enrollment. So the guy gets kicked out of school and shoots up the local mall instead.

What are you proposing we change? Could they have asked his parents to have him involuntarily committed for evaluation? There are far fewer residential mental health facilities than there were, pre R.Max.

I've worked with a few scary loners. No people skills even when they tried to be social. Not one of them has turned up a mass killer yet. (might have done it, but no news stories have reached my ears).

This is not to say I dont wish there was something that could be done. Involuntary commitment can be a powerful tool (and like most such, can be abused). I've seen nothing suggesting the university contacted his parents, for example. I wish they had.

[piqaboo]

Most of the males seem to be upper classmen, professors, or teaching assistants, while most of the females seem to be younger.

Most of the girls seem to have been studying French the guys were engineering majors of various sorts.
So if it were a lower level language class, the students would be younger, and if it were an upper level engineering class, vice versa.
He did seem to have some specific targets in mind. Oddly, not the English Dept, who were the people who shunned attending class with him.

[Shapley]

What are you proposing we change?

The same thing that was proposed a year ago - allow the people the arm themselves against the threat such people pose.

If we are to change the current status we have two ways to go, IMHO:

1. increase restrictions on freedoms. More police presence, with more police powers to investigate and apprehend people pre hoc. Give the government more power to disarm the people and to impose involuntary confinement and/or treatment of persons suspected of posing a threat to society, or

2. increase freedoms. Loosen restrictions on the right to bear arms. Permit law-abiding citizens to provide for their own defense against persons who begin threatening society.

I, myself, favour the latter.

[piqaboo]

Have you read "The Mouse that Roared"?

[Shapley]

He did seem to have some specific targets in mind. Oddly, not the English Dept, who were the people who shunned attending class with him.

I think English was in another building. I'm not sure why French and German were in an Engineering building, but I'm sure there was a reason.

The attack was very much premeditated. He took the time to acquire the locks and chains, and to fit them on the doors. If we accept that he was behind the earlier bomb threats, then it is probable that they were part of an effort aimed at assessing the security response at the University.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Other items that were seized included a folding knife; two computers, a hard disk and other computer disks; documents, books, notebooks and other writings; a digital camera; compact disks; and two Dremel tools, which are rotating tools used for cutting, sanding and other applications

Somebody's been snooping in my desk!

Seriously, this kid, weird and sick as he clearly was, could not possibly have been weirder or sicker than, say, Stephen King or Edgar Allen Poe. And, while I'm not sure about the other 49 states, in California an individual can only be involuntarily committed for mental evaluation for about 3 days, and the next of kin or a peace officer has to initiate the paperwork and a judge has to approve it. If the evaluation is scary enough to worry the doctor, there are further steps that can be taken against the patient's will, but a judge is still going to have to approve them. This is part of this "due process" required in restricting an individual's liberty. (Which, trust me, the home for the bewildered will do.)

The university has no right, nor any obligation, to force an adult student into counselling or therapy or any other medical regimen.

However, since the university declared that the campus should be a weapon-free zone, they may well have an obligation to ensure that the compliant unarmed students would be free from attack by noncompliant armed individuals. I'm not sure how they could do that, short of weapons detectors and state troopers at all campus and building entrances. Sounds expensive and obtrusive; two words that professional educators tend to find unattractive.

The pro-firearm groups are absolutely correct that a person who is intent on committing murder will not be dissuaded by reason or regulation. Only force has a chance of succeeding. Only a firearm would give me, a fat and arthritic middle-aged woman, a reasonable chance of defending myself against a Mr. Runamok.

[Shapley]

I agree. I used to write some pretty macabre 'literature' in high school. I would say it was the literary equivalent of the game 'gross out'. Despite this I grew up ... well, maybe not normal, but well within tolerance.

So, as I said, the solutions seem to be either more restrictions or more freedom, and I favour more freedom.

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

Virginia Tech Shooter Sent Package to NBC On Day Of Shootings

Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was declared "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" and posed "an imminent danger," according to a 2005 temporary detention order issued by a Virginia district court.

That revelation came to light Wednesday as the FBI confirmed that Cho had sent a package to NBC News containing photographs, videos and several written documents -- including a manifesto.

Sources told FOX News that a preliminary examination of the package shows the documents contain wording that is very similar to the notes that were reported to have been found in Cho's dorm room. One early theory is that Cho packaged and sent the same material.

[Haggis@wk]

CAT

Haggis - are you saying that students should be given a gun when they enroll at a State University?

The thought is frightening - students being allowed to have guns at school.

I admit I don't really know what the solution is, but more guns certainly can't be the answer.

“but more guns certainly can't be the answer” Why not? Something you learned in school?

More guns in the hands of peaceful people have been the answer time and again; didn’t you read the article I linked?

Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason; Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.
In The Roanoke Times last year - after another campus incident, when a dangerous escaped inmate was roaming the very same campus - Wiles wrote that, when his class was evacuated, "Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness. That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself."

In Utah, there is no "gun-free schools" exception to the licensed carry law. In K-12 schools and in universities, teachers and other adults can and do legally carry-concealed guns. In Utah, there has never been a Columbine-style attack on a school. Nor has there been any of the incidents predicted by self-defense opponents -- such as a teacher drawing a gun on a disrespectful student, or a student stealing a teacher's gun.

Israel uses armed teachers as part of a successful program to deter terrorist attacks on schools

The only thing that could have stopped Cho from doing what he intended on doing would maybe have been preventative counselling.

But really, I don't think there is any way to stop someone insane from doing what they intend to do?

You already answered your own question. There is virtually nothing anyone could have done to prevent this horror. Think about this, Cho could have told someone “I’m going to kill 30+ people next week” and nothing could have been done to prevent it. Claiming you’re going to murder someone is not sufficient to do the one thing that could have been done to prevent it, locking him up.

Look, they already knew he was dangerous and they STILL couldn’t lock him up. He even planned to prevent the only people on campus he knew were armed, the campus police, to get at him by chaining the doors giving him even more time to find and shoot victims. You think that was an accident? He knew he was in a “gun free zone” and only had to worry about them, not his intended victims.

You think there aren’t thousands of people right now wishing that Bradford Wiles HAD been armed and was in the same building Monday?

You seem a reasonably intelligent person, would you put a sign in your yard that says “This house is a gun free zone”? (truly, I hope you wouldn’t) So why do that at the colleges?

Ban all gun ownership in the U.S.? How well has that worked out in Canada, Great Britain and Australia? Just because “If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” is a hoary cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

I can’t begin to understand people who somehow think that the police will always be there and they don’t have to worry about their safety. I take the protection of myself and my family very seriously.

“The thought is frightening - students being allowed to have guns at school.”

Once again, why? We’ve already heard from one student who could have been armed and present. 18 year olds are all but adults in every state of the union, why shouldn’t they be responsible enough to be trusted with a firearm?

I suspect that a media that doesn’t support gun ownership and thus doesn’t report “good” gun news has shaped much of your attitude. Americans drive-off home invaders a half-million times a year, according to a 1997 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a lot of them use guns to do it. You can read some of them at this website

Firearms are used every day by law-abiding citizens to defend themselves but because the media is generally hostile to gun rights those incidents go unreported except locally.

[Shapley]

When I was in High School students used to take guns to school all the time. They weren'tt usually taken into the building, they were left on gun racks in the back of their vehicles or in the trunks of vehicles. They were, on occasion, taken into the building, because making stocks and gun racks were two of the most popular projects in shop class. We never really thought much about their presence, but we also never had school shootings.

Now, schools are gun free and there are shootings quite often.