Virginia Tech tragedy

[tonphanan]

My heart goes out to the families of everyont at VT. I won't Monday quarterback this one, everyone can say what should have been done to save the few and protect the many. The Blacksburg area will need some time to get over this one. It's always sad to hear of these ever when you are thousands of miles away.

[Diddly]

Not sure if this made the news anywhere else, but this event looks to have inspired a bomb threat at St. Edward's U here in Austin. I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of ******** trying to be "cool" but you can never be too sure.

As for VT, terrible, just terrible. Thoughts and prayers go out to the victims families & friends.

[Matt]

There was a scare at OU today when a woman reported seeing a man walking around campus with a rifle on his shoulder.

After locking all the buildings down, and after the man was tracked down and tackled, it was determined that the "rifle" he was carrying was actually a closed umbrella.

[stormie]

Whenever I read of a tragedy such as this, I immediately get this sickening dullness in my gut. I try to resist the urge to watch, listen to and read all about the horror, but inevitably I'm drawn back. I want to know what could possibly motivate someone to be so hateful. Was it one event? Was it a horrible childhood? The loss of loved ones? And these are all aimed not by just simple curiosity, but instead by a need to prevent anything like this from happening to the people around me.

From what I've read, this troubled shooter wrote about his hate toward women, rich kids and religion, specifically Christianity. Also, all the descriptions of this guy say he was just socially inept, scary and disturbed. He wouldn't talk to anyone, and all his "poetry" and writing was filled with disturbing violence. My knee-jerk thoughts point to his upbringing and his relationships with his parents (specifically the mom), but it could be anything else. I just hope that they eventually piece together the reasons why this guy did this.

[Tracy]

My heart goes out to the friends and families of the victims.  So horrible.

Now all of the other nutcases are crawling out of the woodwork.  A kid in the Charlotte area just this afternoon pulled into a school parking lot and waved a gun.  The story is still unfolding.  He's been caught but someone -- don't know if it was the kid w/the gun or not -- is in critical condition.

The elementary school a mile from our neighborhood is now on lockdown -- there apparently is someone in the area with a gun.  My kids aren't even in school yet and I have to keep them inside when there's trouble at a school now

Update:  apparently this situation involves an inmate on a work/road crew who has escaped and hasn't been caught yet.  He was working near the school.

[Famine]

Am I supposed to care about the shooter? The news seems to think so. It seems like they're trying to make me care about his past and all that. What ever happened to shunning bad people?

Also, I know last year Virginia Tech became a gun free campus. I can't help but think this could have been a less tragic event if some law abiding citizen with a CHL put two in his chest and one in his head.

Sad really.

Kevin

[Nathan]

Gen Y shaped, not stopped, by tragedy

Interesting article.

More worrisome is the idea that some young people have come to view these tragedies as just "a part of life," says Robert Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.

"It's something that happens now and then," Thompson says. "They consume it to the point that they don't want to anymore, and then they quit consuming it."

Logan Stommel, 18, of Washington says he feels somewhat desensitized by all these tragedies, to the point where it doesn't affect the way he thinks about life.

"We tend to avoid the news — it's all bad — and we're pretty mellow about it," he says.

"We probably know some people who are more emotionally invested. They think we're a little cold toward situations like these."

Shocked and saddened as they are about Virginia Tech, "it's almost as if it's become the norm to expect the outrageous," says Kelvin Driscoll, 21, of Lakewood, Calif., a senior at the University of Southern California who wants to run for the state Senate.

I have to say it's true. Growing up amid a constant media/Internet barrage of shuttle explosions, terrorist attacks, cult deaths, and school massacres has made me a little dead to all of it. Intellectually, I appreciate that this sort of thing never happened back in the '80s/'70s/'60s'/'50s when you other guys were kids so it's different for you--but for my entire conscious lifetime, that's just how the world has worked.

I mean, the majority of these tragedies couldn't really be prevented (hindsight being 20/20) and the odds of any of them happening to any given individual are extremely slim. So there's no sense in getting all paranoid about it, and after a point you have to just get on with life. I'm more worried about things like dying in a freeway accident, or falling and cracking my skull open on the toilet rim, since statistically those are far more probable. You gotta prioritize what you worry about.

In addition, of course, there's the geographical distances and the fact that I didn't know anyone personally involved in any of these tragedies, which makes it a lot easier to emotionally detach, but that's human nature I think.

Am I wrong? I'm genuinely interested in hearing other points of view on this--am I making a realistic risk assessment or am I just a callous self-centered prick?

[ruiner]

Did anyone else read the 'plays' he wrote for a college course?

Richard McBeef

Can students pass a course with this kind of work these days?

Oh, there's another play entitled Mr. Brownstone -- it can be found at the above link.

[Darth Slothus]

Intellectually, I appreciate that this sort of thing never happened back in the '80s/'70s/'60s'/'50s when you other guys were kids so it's different for you--but for my entire conscious lifetime, that's just how the world has worked.

Am I wrong? I'm genuinely interested in hearing other points of view on this--am I making a realistic risk assessment or am I just a callous self-centered prick?

I wouldn't be too quick to say these things never happened in those years though Nathan. I recall: US hostage situations in Iran, a guy walking into a McDonalds and shooting to death several folks, a man with an AK rifle going to a grade school and shooting up a bunch of kids, assasinations/attempts at Olympics or on presidents, how about a loon holed up in a tower in Texas sniping a bunch of folks long ago?-just to name a few.

Anyway, I think the media these days is ridiculous and wants to inset into your brain background character information on bad guys , why we should feel sorry for them-or the Columbine killas , telling us how it's our fault by 3's-coulda,woulda,shoulda's and talking about all of this for long periods after these incidents occurred .

It's getting ridiculous now and..after reading Famines' intelligent post I totally agree with him on this issue. Don't try to get me to care about the killer or give him any more attention as he deserved none-- he gave up any chances of that when he started pulling the trigger. Call me 'old school' but I turn my back on freaks like that while I grieve for folks that didn't even have a chance or see it coming. 

But I won't sit here (like others have said) and wonder/point fingers at how this should/could have been prevented-it's pointless. These kinda things are freakish in nature and 'lessons learned'-(were there?) aren't applicable to future unique situations anyway.

--it's sad

Slothus

[CHEWIE]

I agree with people who think that trying to point fingers at someone else, try and understand "why" he did it, how it could have been prevented, etc. is pointless.  This blatant murderer should be scorned not felt sorry for.  We live in a society that is too politically correct.  The guy had issues and the media is trying to politicize the situation and find someone to blame.  Makes me sick.  There's a lot of nuts out there, and you never really think that someone would actually go through with this if it's someone you know.  So you can only blame one person - the killer.

And what really sucks is this kind of hanus killing spree doesn't surprise me.  I'm not saying I want the news to portray everything as "Pleasantville" but with really nothing but negative news covered these days, I can't help but become somewhat desensitized to this sort of thing.  Which is a shame.  It's a terrible tragedy and my heart does go out to the victims and to this guy's family. 

But do I feel sorry for the killer?  Hell no.  Absolutley not, not under any circumstances unless he was possessed by the Devil himself and had no choice.  And remember these things do happen thoughout history.  A certain percentage of the population are psychopaths.  The higher population, the more psychopaths are out there.  And I agree, it would have been better if some student with a gun license had blown this guy's head off before he could have taken more lives.

But you can't live your life living in fear.  Awareness and fear are two totally different things.  One should be aware that things like this can happen, but don't go living your life in fear of it. 

 

[Matt]

Focusing on a killer's past is a completely natural thing for the media to do after a senseless tragedy like this.  It doesn't mean they want people to feel sorry or sympathetic for them.  People want to try and better understand why events like these happen, what caused them, and to do that you have to delve into the killer's past, his backstory, to try and learn more.  I mean, the guy removed himself from the planet, so it's not like he's around to put on trial or interview after.  So all we have left is to dig into his past.  That doesn't mean we should feel any sympathy for him.

 

[Matt]

What is it about the middle of April that makes all the crazies finally flip their wigs?

OKC bombing - April 19, 1995
Columbine - April 20, 1999
V-Tech - April 16, 2007

And also the Waco Branch Davidian thing, that was on April 19, 1993.  Not exactly the same as the others, but it's still a bizarre, entirely unnecessary incident worth mentioning.

Here's a few other noteworthy, horrible, mid-April events:

Abraham Lincoln shot/died - April 14/15, 1865
Hitler born - April 20, 1889
San Francisco earthquake - April 18, 1906
Mark Twain died - April 21, 1910
Titanic hit/sunk - April 14/15, 1912
Albert Einstein died - April 18, 1955
Joey Lawrence born - April 20, 1976
U.S. Embassy in Beirut bombed - April 18, 1983
USS Iowa disaster - April 19, 1989

I'm sure there's a few other events out there worth mentioning, too.  Weird how many awful things have occurred in the middle of this month.

[name]

add:


Chernobyl nuclear disaster   26-Apr   1986
96 killed in stadium rush - Sheffeild, England   15-Apr   1989

[P-Siddy]

Or end of April, Saddam Hussein on the 28th (who had shared his birthday with me until earlier this year).

[Diddly]

And now a gunman has barricaded himself inside NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.