More killings…
Is it a mere coincidence, or is there something about the place that seems to foster or attract violent types?
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Is it a mere coincidence, or is there something about the place that seems to foster or attract violent types?
Sad to say for the victims, but proudly putting up signs identifying someplace as a “gun-free zone–as many universities and other facilities around our country do–just tells the wolves in our society where to find a guaranteed defenseless concentration of sheep.
It was suggested, after the first massacre at VT, that one way to make another attack less likely was to allow property licensed teachers and students who had concealed carry permits to carry on campus, but that pro-active, aggressive approach was rejected, in favor of a passive, non-confrontational approach, a beefed-up warning system, which does nothing to stop an attack, but which merely informs students and faculty that–like rabbits– they should hide, to freeze in place, with what is likely to be the all too predictable outcome that seems to be is playing out as we speak.
>> Is it a mere coincidence, or is there something about the place that seems to foster or attract violent types? <<
The Unabomber and Amy Bishop, notorious mass murderers, are both Harvard educated.
Virginia Tech is a big state school- the largest in Virginia, I am fairly sure. Virginia is far more selective, though I imagine it still has crimes committed there as well. Blacksburg is such a nice area; it is a shame that it will receive this sort of negative attention and reputation.
how about the idea that we can self determine our future slamming up against socal engineering which means they determine your future… and one discovering one has very little of the first now that the second is normalized…
the two are mutually exclusive
what we have is a public that believes something and then for a few, who are in the actuality, the beliefs are found to be not correct. then there is no sympathy from anyone and they are isolated as their reality no longer matches the common one which is not built on the same information
such falling out of reality and into a new one where your isolated and cant return to the old one, tends to cause weaker minds to break
The University of Virginia is bigger. As for VA Tech, there is a gun shop run across the street from campus, in between the Pizza shops and coffee houses. Very convenient, one can go mad, walk off campus, buy a gun and start killing and still be on time for one’s next class.
Sorry for the hostile sarcasm, but my kid was a student during the massacre and I know and know of around 7 people killed by handguns. I get frustrated at the concern over second amendment freedoms I know is coming every time something like this happens.
Here’s a my victim’s list:
1) My next door neighbor killed in a gas station hold up, age around 16.
2&3) the facilities manager at a place where I worked killed himself after killing his wife. Good man with a problem, Nam vet and former marine warrant officer.
4) the gifted son of a co-worker of my wife. He wanted to represent the US in the Olympics. Gunnned down my some epsilon minus who was jealous of him.
5) the son of a former co-worker. He was a new father.
6) My son’s former prom date. Was playing around with a handgun and drinking.
7) A friend of my daughter’s, playing around with a handgun.
I once commented to a pro second amendment essay at Pajamas Media that 98% of the gun deaths are either murder, suicide or accidents and a mere 2% justifiable homicide and got vituperation and nonsensical argument in return (surprise, surprise). You would have thought I was suggesting removing their sex organs.
Knives and stones too.
And fists, don’t forget fists.
Machetes. Boiling water.
Fast moving cars driven by teenagers.
Well, men in general. Let’s rid the world of them since they are the real killers.
No doubt, though, that any gun owner, need exercise extreme caution to restrict access since so many don’t know how to handle guns. But why is it that since gun ownership has gone up, crime has gone down. Could the corresponding amount of lives and property saved be greater than the “collateral damage?”
And, I suppose, the concern is due to a belief that our government wants us defenseless, which doesn’t fill us with confidence for our government.
Is it right to be concerned about whether Fast and Furious was an attempt to promote second amendment restrictions?
Not to be too callous, but when it comes to violence, “where there is a will there is a way,” and if it wasn’t a gun it would be a baseball bat, a broken bottle, poison, a piece of pipe, a rope, a kitchen knife, a sharp pencil or a rock.
A gun is just a tool–it can be used to protect things and people worthy of and in need of protection, it can be used to deter. to terminate violence or, if necessary, to kill those who don’t– it can also be used for evil purposes; it is the person who wields that gun and his motives that are important and determinative, not the gun.
We are primates who are inherently violent, beings born “savages” who need to be “civilized” through being “raised” by our parents and families, helped in this civilizing effort by various civil and religious institutions like the church and school. The lack of such good parenting and its reinforcement of the proper lessons by church and school accounts–I believe–fo most of the lawlessness and violence that we see increasing all around us.
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Neo seems to be goading us with what strikes me as an otherwise pointless question:”Is it a mere coincidence, or is there something about the place that seems to foster or attract violent types?”
My early and only reading of the story is that a presumably armed cop was shot to death after a traffic stop. This has in fact been known to happen in other venues, all known as roads.
As Scott observes, is it coincidence or is there something about Harvard that fosters or attracts future mass murderers?
And for Bob: I am aware of several cases of death by football coach during training. And they are still to be found on all campuses even today.
Bob, I too am a Mom of 3 VT Hokies. 2 of them were students that day in 2007. My oldest was a (super, ha ha) Sr at the time. They lost a good friend, Michael, that day. When my oldest went to get his younger brother who was in the dorm, he was carrying a weapon that he was licensed to carry (he has grown up around hunters, also an Eagle Scout). I was pissed he would do this at the time. Just infuriated he would do this. It was against the school rules!!! But now I have a different take. I now have 2 there now. One in med school off campus (he was a Freshman in 2007) another a Jr. Today was horrifying. My boys found each other today and stayed at my son’s apartment, safe and secure. I don’t know if Blacksburg is any different from any place, but something like this just brings back terrible memories. At least the campus seemed to handle the information in a much more timely manner. I still haven’t heard who the shooter was, or even if he was a student there. I always wondered, if someone, student or professor, had been armed that day, maybe they could have stopped Cho. Evidentally the response from law enforcement today was formidable…my son said it looked like a war zone. But my heart stopped when I couldn’t reach my youngest for an hour. He was working out at the gym downtown. Sheesh. How many more grey hairs did I get today? Where is the wine?
Bob from Virginia: I have a .44 to suggest to an intruder in my home that coming in during the middle of the night is not a very good idea.
You, on the other hand, can discuss gun control with such an intruder.
Guess what! I win!
We must treat those who have the honest idea that no guns equals no crime with respect if they have lost loved ones.
But how far does that respect extend? To “I knew somebody?”
Don’t ask me to suspend my rights of self defense for nebulous and dilatory claims.
Dan & Curtis, just because I am in love with wasting my time I’ll repeat what any semi self aware cop can tell you: unless you are women living alone or live in the more fun parts of the inner city, or in the middle of nowhere your firearm is a far greater threat to you, your family and the pooch than any potential felon.
I will confess that the thought of a gun being analogous to knives, stones, fists, machetes, boiling water, fast moving cars driven by teenagers and football coaches had not occurred to me so I may have to re-adjust my opinions. I can kick myself for not thinking of all this before.
Wolla Dalbo wrote “it is the person who wields that gun and his motives that are important and determinative, not the gun.” I honestly do not know the ratio of accidents and suicides to homicides, however if it were not for guns in the hands of decent people the above list would be three victims long rather than seven.
As for “if it wasn’t a gun it would be a baseball bat, a broken bottle, poison, a piece of pipe, a rope, a kitchen knife, a sharp pencil or a rock”, you left out football coaches.
England’s ban on guns has led to an epidemic of knife violence.
Trivially easy to acquire. Trivially easy to hide.
The police have reverted back to wearing chain mail (called stab proof vests). And, the legislature was considering laws to ban carrying any knives. So, good luck buying a set of kitchen knives at the local Tesco.
And the medical reports of bar fight injuries coming out of England & Australia (which also banned most guns) are horrific (e.g., a chair leg rammed though the top of the skull and into the brain).
So, violence is still occurring. And people are still being maimed or dying. It just “gun” violence.
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Of course a major contributor is that England has also de facto banned self-defense.
For example, most burglaries are committed while the homeowner is at home, and often homeowners that fight back are arrested for using more than “the minimum amount of force”.
In the US most burglars aren’t so brazen.
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I have no problem with imposing a ~2 day waiting period before allowing someone to buy a gun, as that would cut down on impulsive emotional purchases. I also don’t have a problem with requiring 1st time gun owners to complete a gun safety course (akin to a driver’s ed course).
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Also, I’d like to see those that impose “gun free zones” (aka no self defense zones) be held legally liable for their decision.
If you take away your customer’s ability to protect themselves, you should be required to assume a duty to protect them.
As I discovered when I was researching statistics on gun deaths and on the use of guns by people in self-defense and/or in preventing crime, such statistics on this highly charged political issue and other such issues, like, for instance, the extent of illiteracy and the extent of homelessness here in the U.S.–have similar problems with a lack of systematic collection, objective standards of measurement, the use of particular terminology and definitions to skew results–these are areas in which statistics are often not systematically gathered and recorded, are recorded in ways that make their useful interpretation very difficult, or are just not gathered at all.
Most often, I found, various advocacy groups interested in, say, “gun violence,” or homelessness, or the problem of illiteracy will be the ones gathering the statistics (and interpreting them) –statistics that, just by happenstance, I am sure–bolster the case for their particular position (and for more government intervention and funding). Sometimes, I have found, when there are several possible series of statistics, the choice has usually been made to choose those statistics which bolster a case, regardless of their completeness, accuracy or merit.
In the case of ”illiteracy” for instance, there is the key question of what is to be measured, is it “total illiteracy” i.e. the best anyone can do is write an “X” for their name and they can’t read and comprehend anything written, or is it “functional illiteracy,” in which someone can read common things like stop signs, sign his name, and scrawl a few lines and for the rest “fake it,” but can’t really read a newspaper and understand or usefully use/act on what he read, write an intelligent letter to the editor, or read and understand things like simple assembly instructions (hence the increasing prevalence of pictures and diagrams), much less tax returns, credit card applications, and real estate and legal documents.
Because, if by counting those who are “illiterate” you are counting those who are totally ”illiterate,” their percentage in our population is likely (we don’t really know this for sure because there are no reliable statistics) low but, if you are counting those who are “functionally illiterate,” the number is likely to be very, to be surprisingly high.
And, in some cases, where this issue is contentious, the solution has apparently been to just not collect statistics at all (for fear of what will be found).
I recall reading several yrs ago a Brit report that on average each residential unit (apt., home) in Merry Old is burglarized every year, and that the Bobbies no longer bother to investigate individual burglaries because there are just way too many, and apprehensions never occur.
Of course, these are usually non-violent events, save for entry method, so that’s OK. The aged pensioner cowers while stuff is removed. Redistribution. Share the wealth.
Don Carlos–I read a report from England a few months ago in which the Englishman told about “yobs” who had run a car up on and around this person’s lawn, completely tore it up, and then leisurely and insolently drove off at slow speed, and when the homeowner called the police they simply refused to come out and investigate, or to try to look for the perps, and he said that that was the way things now were in England.
Clockwork Orange sans remediation.
Violence and Blacksburg seems to go back some ways in history.
“After the French and Indian War erupted, a Shawnee Indian war party attacked the settlement, probably on July 30, 1755. The Indians killed four settlers, including Col. Patton; wounded one settler; and captured another five, including Mary Draper Ingles, whose wedding to William Ingles had been the first European marriage west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and their two sons. The Indians walked their captives to the Ohio Valley, but after several months in captivity, Mary Ingles escaped and wandered as much as 800 miles to return home.”
link: http://www.vt.edu/where_we_are/blacksburg/blacksburg-history.html
It’s a gun free zone. They didn’t learn the first time, nor did they learn the second time. Good thing even if the brass of the US military doesn’t learn, the NCOs and lower tier officers do.