Virginia Tech Massacre

[Don]

What most strikes me about the incident is that the killer should never have been able to legally purchase firearms.

[mahlertitan]

What most strikes me about the incident is that the killer should never have been able to legally purchase firearms.

it just happens that Virginia is the easiest state to acquire an fire arm, all you need are the following:
over 21
resident of virginia
no criminal background

[Redbeard]

Your comments appy to Columbine, where police did not enter the building until several hours after the shooters had killed themselves and one teacher bled to death waiting hours for help to arrive.  This followed from police procedures which called for the establishment of a command post, etc, before anything gets done.  However, a police official I heard on NPR reported that this event led to a change of basic police procedures.  The new procedure, which it is claimed was followed in this case, calls for the first four officers who arrive on the scene to enter the building and move towards the sound of gunfire.  I have not seen any official statement on how long it take police to engage the gunman, only reports of how long the gunfire went on from students who escaped (10 or 15 minutes was reported by the NY times) which I assume would be highly unreliable.

Fair point.  We really need more information on the response to the VA Tech shooting.  Perhaps the police really did quickly enter the building and they have just left that part out of their released information.  At a gut level this seems very unlikely to me.  This killing stands out because of the very high number of people killed;  something is different here.  From the accounts released so far the killer wasn't highly trained (he bought the gun a month ago I think), so the shooter doesn't appear to be the unusual link.  Neither does the weapon used (9mm pistol and a .22).

I will say I'm cynical based on what happened in Columbine.  As you said their response was abysmal, but they have been generally very successful at covering this up.  I fear we may be seeing a repeat of Columbine in more ways than one.

[head-case]

The media's reporting of the killer being a Chinese student from Shanghai, with his name, alleged date of arrival, his website, is shockingly unprofessional. The young man has received hundreds of death threats, and his life made a mess. I can understand misreporting the Asian student being Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean, or Malaysian, but where did they get the name, website, flight number, etc. to report?

I never saw a single media report that reported the shooter to be any other than the Korean student, Cho Seung-Hui.

[head-case]

This killing stands out because of the very high number of people killed;  something is different here.  From the accounts released so far the killer wasn't highly trained (he bought the gun a month ago I think), so the shooter doesn't appear to be the unusual link.  Neither does the weapon used (9mm pistol and a .22).

What training is needed to shoot unarmed people confined in a room at point-blank range?  He apparently had the requisite contempt for human life, including his own.  If we assume, as some witnesses reported, that the shooting went on for 10 minutes and was terminated when the shooter heard police approaching and killed himself, then I wouldn't consider this an unreasonable response time.  Hopefully there will be a thorough inquiry and the facts will come out.

 

[springrite]

I never saw a single media report that reported the shooter to be any other than the Korean student, Cho Seung-Hui.

Chicago Sun Time (The columnist/reporter is Mike Snyder or Snead or something) reported the killer being 24 year old Chinese student from Shanghai who arrived on August 7, 2006, United Flight from Shanghai to Sn Francisco. His name is Wen En Jiang. It was also picked up by radio, Internet media and later other media as well. His website and other info, including photo, was later reported in other media. That is BEFORE reports confirming that the killer was actually Cho. Jiang got the information from death threat phone calls and later saw his own photo posted! (Couldn't the caller tell that he's not the killer by the fact that the killer'd dead and Jiang answered his phone?)

[carlos]

I think that this slight inconvenient will cost the University some
bucks. 500 millons maybe?

[Redbeard]

What training is needed to shoot unarmed people confined in a room at point-blank range?  He apparently had the requisite contempt for human life, including his own.  If we assume, as some witnesses reported, that the shooting went on for 10 minutes and was terminated when the shooter heard police approaching and killed himself, then I wouldn't consider this an unreasonable response time.  Hopefully there will be a thorough inquiry and the facts will come out.

Hitting a target with a pistol is much harder than most people who have never fired one tend to imagine.  I know it looks easy in the movies, but it does take focus and practice.  A novice with a handgun (if he was in fact as he now appears) would likely have missed far more often than he hit.  This is often a saving grace when police confront armed criminals.  Assuming as you do that he was at "point blank range", he would have been close enough for his intended victims to rush him when he needs to change magazines (not an uncommon outcome for shootings like this).   My point is he isn't the first lone nut with a pistol to enter a crowded room and open fire.  People often do get killed in these scenarios but not in the numbers we saw here. 

[springrite]

U.S. Police May Have Identity of Virginia Tech Gunman (Update4)

By Vivek Shankar and Nancy Kercheval

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The gunman responsible for the massacre at Virginia Tech University, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, was an Asian male student who lived in a campus dormitory, President Charles Steger said today.

...

Authorities are investigating whether the shooter was a 24- year-old Chinese national who arrived in San Francisco on a United Airlines flight Aug. 7 on a student visa issued in Shanghai, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper reported on its Web site, citing an unidentified official.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Michael Sneed report has been removed from the Sun Times website, replace by the same reporter's report a day later of Cho being the suspect.

[knight66]

I don't suppose it should matter, but I did think the President of the University made a very strange impression. Like an accountant on tranquilisers. For the most part he seemed impassive and what a strange sight to watch seemingly a smile play round his lips at points when you felt he should look grief stricken. I guess nerves can do strange things to people, but impressions are important and he gave off vibes of complacency.

Can anyone in the US explain to me why, even if it is accepted that citizens seem to need weapons, that they be given access to semiautomatic guns?

We certainly have crazies over here in the UK, but in the main they manage to shoot one or perhaps two people with an illegal gun. Other than that they have to get up close and personal with a knife, and that tends also to reduce the body count, even if not the proportion of incidents.

I however long ago accepted that people here who I like and respect, nevertheless have what is to me a completely alien attitude.... that their right to a gun is as vital as a need to breathe and collateral damage has to be lived with, or died by.

Mike

[MishaK]

Hitting a target with a pistol is much harder than most people who have never fired one tend to imagine.  I know it looks easy in the movies, but it does take focus and practice.  A novice with a handgun (if he was in fact as he now appears) would likely have missed far more often than he hit.  This is often a saving grace when police confront armed criminals.  Assuming as you do that he was at "point blank range", he would have been close enough for his intended victims to rush him when he needs to change magazines (not an uncommon outcome for shootings like this).   My point is he isn't the first lone nut with a pistol to enter a crowded room and open fire.  People often do get killed in these scenarios but not in the numbers we saw here. 

The difference though is that he seems to have shot each victim several times. The hospitals were reporting each victim they received had at least three gun wounds. It's likely that a novice shooting at each victim once will not lethally wound every single one. But three plus shots per person lowers the survival rate significantly. I'm sure after a few rounds he got better at aiming and handling the weapon, too.

[rubio]

I think one of the reasons they have these types of tragedies related to schools and sometimes workplaces in the US (together with weapon culture/history) is the very strong focus on winners in different aspects of every day life. I think this winner worshipping is at it's strongest in the US, and for sure it also has some positive sides. But the people who don't manage to become a winner, like this Cho, will probably feel more like a loser than in any other given country in the world.

At least in Scandinavia (and the most of Europe) these type of massacres seem totally surreal, even if there was one such incident in Germany a few years ago. And I think he was probably inspired by the Columbine case.

Or what do you Americans here think?  

[MishaK]

I think one of the reasons they have these types of tragedies related to schools and sometimes workplaces in the US (together with weapon culture/history) is the very strong focus on winners in different aspects of every day life. I think this winner worshipping is at it's strongest in the US, and for sure it also has some positive sides. But the people who don't manage to become a winner, like this Cho, will probably feel more like a loser than in any other given country in the world.

At least in Scandinavia (and the most of Europe) these type of massacres seem totally surreal, even if there was one such incident in Germany a few years ago. And I think he was probably inspired by the Columbine case.

Or what do you Americans here think?  

That is way too broad of a cultural determinist argument. It seems from the writings of Cho (which are now available on the web) that this was a very disturbed boy with some serious family issues (I am guessing sexual abuse) which prevented him from emotionally opening up to anyone. There are a lot of things at play here that cannot be narrowed down to such a simple formula.

[head-case]

I think one of the reasons they have these types of tragedies related to schools and sometimes workplaces in the US (together with weapon culture/history) is the very strong focus on winners in different aspects of every day life. I think this winner worshipping is at it's strongest in the US, and for sure it also has some positive sides. But the people who don't manage to become a winner, like this Cho, will probably feel more like a loser than in any other given country in the world.

At least in Scandinavia (and the most of Europe) these type of massacres seem totally surreal, even if there was one such incident in Germany a few years ago. And I think he was probably inspired by the Columbine case.

Or what do you Americans here think? 

There may be some truth to this, but it is an oversimplification to say this is a purely American phenomenon.  In the last decade or so there have been similar events (on a smaller scale) at Dawson College, Montreal; Erfurt, Germany; Dubane, Scotland; Concordia University, Montreal; Ecole Polytechnique, Montreaul.  In the latter case the gunman singled out female engineering students.  It seems like Montreal is the world center for mass killing, since no US city has had more than one.

[Redbeard]

The difference though is that he seems to have shot each victim several times. The hospitals were reporting each victim they received had at least three gun wounds. It's likely that a novice shooting at each victim once will not lethally wound every single one. But three plus shots per person lowers the survival rate significantly. I'm sure after a few rounds he got better at aiming and handling the weapon, too.

This may well be what happened.  However, this would mean he fired several hundred rounds to kill and wound the number he did.  At 10 rounds per magazine (US law for about a decade now) this would mean 20-30 times to stop and fumble for a full magazine or manually load an empty one, replace the magazine and bring the gun back to firing position.  All this while under stress and using a fairly complex piece of equipment, with his intended victims looking for an opportunity to rush him.  It could be just awful luck the whole way around, but again I suspect law enforcement fell down in a profound way and just don't want to have to face their own failure. 

[Larry Rinkel]

"People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them," [Virginia Governor] Kaine said at a Tuesday evening news conference.

"To those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say: Take that elsewhere. Let this community deal with grieving individuals and be sensitive to those needs."

Amen.

[MishaK]

This may well be what happened.  However, this would mean he fired several hundred rounds to kill and wound the number he did.  At 10 rounds per magazine (US law for about a decade now) this would mean 20-30 times to stop and fumble for a full magazine or manually load an empty one, replace the magazine and bring the gun back to firing position.  All this while under stress and using a fairly complex piece of equipment, with his intended victims looking for an opportunity to rush him.  It could be just awful luck the whole way around, but again I suspect law enforcement fell down in a profound way and just don't want to have to face their own failure. 

Actually, that is exactly what happened. Many eyewitnesses reported that he reloaded several times and seemed completely unstressed doing so. Also, he appears to have had two guns with him. Not to prematurely say that law enforcement didn't fail as well, but Cho did apparently blast quite a number of rounds into each victim.

[head-case]

Looking at the rest of the paper, citizens of some cities may well wish for a day as calm and tranquil as Monday in Blackburg, VA.  At least 157 are dead today by violence in Bagdad. 

[PerfectWagnerite]

Yeah but does anyone really care about what goes on in Bagdad? No matter how many get killed in Bagdad it doesn't hit home. Plus the latest poll says that 80% of Iraqis think it is okay to shoot at American troops so I hardly think most of this country is sympathetic to what goes on in Iraq. VA is in our own very backyard that's why it gets all the coverage.

[greg]

well, i'm probably going to be going to a technical school in a few months from now  
such a shame the guy was South Korean, i'd rather him have been some crazy North Korean dude- the only person i knew how was South Korean (at least, his mom was) was one of the nicest people i ever knew, behaved better than anyone I've ever known, though he was a bit too quiet when it came to meeting new people. Mostly, he just stayed inside playing video games all day, though, lol.

i really wonder, though, if people would describe the shooter as being nice or quiet (i haven't read the details or anything). Probably he was the type of guy who holds the anger in and just makes up a plan to let it all out.

which makes me think...... looking at the guy's background, it gave me a few thoughts about comparing different cultures and races- no offence intended for anyone though.... (next post)