An attack at Virginia Tech University has killed at least 32 students including the gunman who apparently took his own life.
Rather than deal with the details at this point, I’d simply urge you to visit Hot Air, Michelle’s site, or PJ Media. Allah will have the latest video (as well as updates from various sources) and Michelle, if she follows form, will have MSM-blog react. PJ Media will also round up blog and press reaction.
I first heard about this story after I awoke from a nap around noon central time. The shock I felt upon hearing the number of dead (22 at the time) has been matched only 2 or three times in my life. The death of John Lennon and 9/11 are the only other times I can recall where my mind was unable to grasp the enormity of what had happened. At times like that, you tend to focus on the strangest things. I tried to recall what the school colors of VTU were and what their mascot looked like – anything but deal with the reality that now 32 sets of parents are going to receive the worst call of their lives telling them that their flesh and blood has been senselessly and brutally gunned down while living and learning in a protected enclave that is supposed to keep the outside world at bay.
Even at this early stage where details are sketchy and rumors are rampant, it appears that the gunman engaged in two separate shootings about 2 hours apart. Experts on CNN have speculated that if the murderer was after a specific target and missed them at the dorm, he would have known the target’s schedule and showed up later where he knew he/she would be in class. At the moment, it has been confirmed that the doors to the classroom building were chained shut – a clear indication that the shooter was out to make a name for himself and was determined to make as many of his classmates feel his pain as he had rounds for his guns.
In a perfect world, gun control laws would have kept the weapons out of the shooter’s hands. Also in a perfect world, one of his potential victims would have been armed and cut short his quest for glory. Despite the fact we don’t live in a perfect world and there’s no sign of one emerging any time soon, we can count on the idiots in Congress and the media to start the political posturing, dying to make speeches and write columns telling us about how wrong the opposition is and how this shooting proves this or that about America, or Americans with guns, or violence in America, or how our schools are screwed up, or even blame the victims for not dodging the bullet that killed them.
What this shooting proves is that there are many who will use horrible tragedy to make political hay. And once – just once – I’d like to see those people taken down as severely as the disturbed young man whose random rampage of sick violence snuffed out many a promising life and brought unspeakable tragedy into so many American homes this day.
3:25 pm
Rick: Actually the name of the school is: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Enjoyed your comments. This event another reason to broaden CCW legislation to include students on campus who can qualify.
4:44 pm
Hmmm, Virginia Tech, a place where guns were illegal and as a result there was nobody there to stop this guy from killing 32+ people at pretty much his connivance. My guess is this is exactly what the gun control nuts want to happen, because it is exactly what does happen when nobody can defend themselves.
http://www.mp3.com.au/artist.asp?id=16834
4:48 pm
“What this shooting proves is that there are many who will use horrible tragedy to make political hay.”
Thank you, Harvey (and Michelle Malkin and others) for proving Rick’s point. Perhaps next time save your CCW arguments at least until the bodies get cold.
5:06 pm
Perhaps the worst thing about all the political posturing that is to come, is that we will hear even more paranoid psychotic screaming Commie (rhymes with rich) Rosie O’Donnell, who wants to disarm America even as she has armed guards protecting her.
5:24 pm
UPDATE Reported 33 Killed in Virginia Tech Shooting…
Classes have been canceled today as a scary situation develops in Blacksburg:Shootings in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech left at least one person dead and seven or eight more wounded Monday before police arrested the suspected gunman, officials…
7:09 pm
Developing: Virginia Tech Shooting Incident – 31+...
Since the reports indicate that there was a single assailant and police are conducting a search for a second assailant as a matter of routine, one has to wonder how if there was a single gunman that he managed to get across campus to continue his mur…..
9:13 pm
Nick,
Yep go on pontificating, had VT had CCW this psycho couldn’t have killed 33 innocent unarmed students. When you disarm a population they become sheep for the slaughter to anyone willing to break the law. Try remembering that criminals are not law abiding hence the reference to them as criminals. They are not going to abide by any gun law so gun laws only make victims out of law abiding citizens like those at VT. What people like you need is to be beaten about the head and shoulders with this brutal reality until it sinks in. You have more to fear from criminals who will not follow any gun law then you do from any armed law abiding citizen.
http://www.mp3.com.au/artist.asp?id=16834
9:46 pm
Well said, Rick.
5:22 am
Campus Self-Defense Squelched at Va. Tech in 2006…
“I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions,” Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, “because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus…”...
7:34 am
Arming more people in the name of security without a process identify and weed out the nutcases is not the answer. About 10 days ago here in the Detroit area, a guy got fired on Thursday, bought a shotgun on Friday and went to the office on Monday morning, shooting up the place and killing the 63-year-old receptionist. That ain’t right. Even if someone else in the office were armed, it likely wouldn’t have prevented the receptionist from getting killed when the guy burst through the doors. Interestingly, the guy had earlier been denied a permit for buying a handgun, presumably because of a background check, but because of the goofy gun laws, nothing prevented him from buying the shotgun over the counter without a background check. This was a guy with a history of mental illness, but he still was able to buy a shotgun like it was a pack of cigarettes. Again, that it ain’t right.
9:33 am
[...] This same phenomenon hasn’t been lost on my friend Rick Moran, either: In a perfect world, gun control laws would have kept the weapons out of the shooter’s hands. Also in a perfect world, one of his potential victims would have been armed and cut short his quest for glory. Despite the fact we don’t live in a perfect world and there’s no sign of one emerging any time soon, we can count on the idiots in Congress and the media to start the political posturing, dying to make speeches and write columns telling us about how wrong the opposition is and how this shooting proves this or that about America, or Americans with guns, or violence in America, or how our schools are screwed up, or even blame the victims for not dodging the bullet that killed them. What this shooting proves is that there are many who will use horrible tragedy to make political hay. [...]
5:39 pm
The recent event at VPI&SU attracted “pundits” who not only talked about “gun control” but also a few who’d rather demonize Hollywood or video games. Of course all of this “posturing” is being made before we have the facts. Facts, who needs facts?
Perhaps the real problem (just another possibility, I’m not proposing an absolute) is that many of us have come to believe that we are “owed” immediate gratification. Perhaps the “shooter” wanted an immediate solution to his problem. We may never know. I do know that many pundits were quick to trot out their favorite “demons”. Heck, even Franklin Graham trotted out Satan.
Could things have been done a different way? You bet but as has been pointed out this isn’t a perfect world. Look at the politicians posturing from the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia jetting home on the next plane to the President going to VPI&SU today. Maybe I missed it but one of the Clintons has probably commented “I feel you pain.”
The whole event is horrible. There is probably no easy answer and even more disturbing no “fool-proof” way to prevent it or a similar event from happening in the future. If there is another event I have no doubt that we’ll see everybody “choosing up sides and smelling armpits”. The liberals will point at the conservatives and the conservatives will point at the liberals. I have no idea whether the shooter at VPI&SU was a conservative or a liberal but he got to a point where his “enemies” needed to be put in their place. And we keep doing it.
12:28 am
It’s a very sad news for all the indians especially the tamil people’s from india, a great professor Mr. Lokanathan is also killed by this victim. We are console to his family and friends.
with regards
C. Lingaraj
http://www.medindia.net
2:54 pm
I will give you that the right to bear arms is in the Constitution. That said, I do wish that those on the right would at least admit that this right, in our free society, does come with cost, and this tragedy is one of them.
One more thing, and I welcome responses from anyone out there who can give me an answer. I am nearly 50 and live in New York and yet I have never felt the need or the desire to own a gun. To those gunowners out there I ask, why? Why do you own guns? What do you need them for? Is owning a gun some way of asserting a masculinity you do not inherently have? Is it a replacement for some area of your body that may be smaller than average? Is it a way of projecting courage in a human being that lacks the same?
3:37 am
I hate to nitpick, but you wrote:
“An attack at Virginia Tech University has killed at least 32 students including the gunman who apparently took his own life.”
This sentence is either foolish or evil. Take a look at the verb. Then find its subject. Did the “attack” go on a kill-crazy rampage, or did a depraved English major named Cho do it? Did the “attack” kill Librescu as he protected his students, or did a desperate madman do it? Will survivors spend years trying to forget the look on the attack’s face? If Cho hadn’t killed himself, would the attack have gone to trial?
This sentence subtly takes the focus off the people involved by reifying an event and then past-tensing it into neutrality. Much like when we hear AP reports of “12 people were killed today when a suicide bomber exploded on a bus.”
6:22 pm
Two Million Cho Seung-Hui’s
by Terry Brown
The Hope4Tomorrow Foundation
Founder/Chairman
Virginia Tech Tragedy
On Monday, April 16, 2007, as I watched early reports about the terrible shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech University the thing that surprised me wasn’t necessarily that the shooting had occurred but that the shooter wasn’t a registered sex offender or a family member of a registered sex offender.
Why would I say such a horrible thing? Because it is inevitable unless we make some drastic changes, and I am surprised that it hasn’t happened already.
The most frustrating thing for me on the day that it DOES happen will be that all of my efforts to raise the alarm – that the efforts of the many groups to which I belong who also work tirelessly to raise the alarm – went unheeded. We have already seen several needless deaths of children committed at the hands of those made to bear the burdens of this modern-day Scarlet Letter, namely Dylan Groene and Christopher Barrios, Jr., and I am very fearful that something on the scale of the VT tragedy will happen.
What’s even more tragic about this situation is that it is perpetuated out of red herring mechanisms that exist in the name of public safety but in reality increase the threat against that very safety exponentially above where it would be otherwise.
With over 630,000 registered sex offenders living in our communities as well as their family and friends there are potentially over 2,000,000 Cho Seung-Hui’s coming to a boiling point with every passing moment, with every passing law.
The experts agree with this, and it is unfortunate that it will apparently take a tragedy the scale of that which occurred at Virginia Tech to wake the American people into demanding a change in these laws.
The Hope4Tomorrow Foundation supports responsible/balanced legislation regarding sex offender management.
http://www.hope4tomorrow.us
10:43 am
I am a 22 yo student from Slovakia (Europe)and I am very sad to hear such terrible things. I wonder how can someone take others lives, nobody is God to make decisions about others lives. Terrible
If I imagine that one day I am sitting in my class and on the other day I will lost my clasmates.. it so sad