Apparently, it has happened again, and this time quite possibly worse than ever before. A man went on two seperate shooting rampages today in Virginia on a University campus. As of the latest news report, there were at least 32 students killed, and the numbers of dead have been rising consistently for the last few hours. At least 20 are listed as wounded. The news is still coming in, but as it stands the gunman is among the dead. Nobody is quite sure how he remained free and relatively unmolested between his two rampages almost two hours apart.

Gun massacres are sadly, fairly common in the US, but this appears to be of a magnitude higher than anything else in recent history, and if reports are correct, significantly worse than Columbine.

Firstly, before the debate and resulting bickering begins, allow me to say how horrific it is, and how sad and disgusting this event is.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?


2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?


3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

I don't know. I would hope that it would be an occasion to consider national and state gun policy. Just once I wish that one of these maniacs, instead of killing 15 innocent people in Topeka or whereever, would take himself and his weapons to the national offices of the NRA in Washington DC and let loose there. Yes, I said that.


2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

Personally I believe that all handguns and all fully automatic weapons (or weapons that could easily be converted to fully automatic) should be illegal for general private ownership. I am all for hunting and have done a lot of it myself, always with a long gun. That's all that is necessary for hunting, and a legally short shotgun is the ideal weapon for home defense. A handgun has only one practical purpose, and that is to kill other people. And unlike a long gun, it confers the advantage of surprise.

There is no general right to bear arms. The 2nd Amendment ties the bearing of arms to its utility to "a well-regulated militia."


3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

They can't be entirely avoided. It's a disease in our culture. I am well aware that some mass killings, notably the Texas tower massacre, were committed with hunting rifles. But in general, a restrictive ban on handguns and automatic weapons would go a long way to suppress the rate of murder in the U.S., and would probably prevent some mass killings.

Of course, hardened criminals would still find a way to get guns, but that does not contradict what I have said.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

It’s hard to say. The mere mention of Columbine still brings back powerful feelings of sadness and anger among Americans. But, then too, school shootings are becoming all too familiar and dare I say commonplace. It’s incredibly sad, but I think the population is becoming inured to the tragedy of young people going off the deep end and using guns to make their mark before they exit this world.

A statement by Virginia Tech’s president implies there may have been more than one shooter.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

Since Virginia Tech had a shooting incident happen earlier this year (not by a student), you’d think they might have reexamined their security measures against such incidents. Apparently not.

Since Bush’s insipid response was this:

It’s apparent that he sees no need for any additional laws. I would venture to say Virginia is a state that takes its gun rights seriously, and the loss of a few dozen students won’t make any difference in that regard. All the security measures in the world will not deter someone who is angry/deranged/hopeless/determined enough to make the decision to commit mass murder.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

Until people realize that the easy availability of guns isn’t such a good idea, then there is no way to avoid future shootings.

It is a bad time to begin debating this situation.

We know nothing about this case. It is too early to know so many vital things and the MSM is easily duped and confused on these topics. We think the shooter may have been looking for his girlfriend, might have been Asian* and may have had two 9mm handguns.

Discussing this now is frankly crass and pointless.

For now I think we can all agree this is horrible and extend out thoughts and well wishes to everyone there.

*...seems Asian shooter is incorrect ...and it seems that there may have been more than one shooter ...seems they are now reporting it was a lone Asian gunman (CNN Headline News 15:26)

Not to be critical of Vermillion, but I agree with BaphometsAdvocate, attempting to answer the questions posed in this thread is way too premature.

We do not know the details of this senseless slaughter. The number of dead and wounded are still being assessed and there are not enough facts of what happened and why to reach a informed conclusion.

At this point, any debate is a rush to judgment.

I am tempted to disagree. At least 31 are dead in this senseless tragedy, does the answer to my questions change if the final number is five higher or eight higher? We do not know the name or nature of the shooter, but the nature of the crime is as clear as day. The questions posed seem straightforward enough.

Of course if you feel it is too senstive an issue to discuss, I respect that of course. But I do not thinbk the questions I posed are in any way 'crass' nor 'pointless'. Regardless, I do not wish to debate the debate. If people prefer, don't post your answer for a few hours, until more information is available I suppose... Or don't post a response at all.

I respectfully disagree. It seems to me that the salient facts are already known. Whatever the details, upwards of 30 innocent people have been killed by a lunatic, or by lunatics, with firearms.

If the firearm toting lunatics turn out to be Muslims on a Jihad using illegally gotten guns I'd day it changes the nature of this debate greatly verses a deranged college student using his Police Officer father's legal handguns and bullets that were under lock and key.

If it were a muslim we would have had that information after 5 people died.



Absolutely not. Columbine was likely far more tragic, and it has had no lasting effect. More died in this shooting, but in Columbine it was in a high school. If our kids not being safe in a high school was not enough to motivate this country to serious gun reform... 30 something college kids will be old news in two weeks, if that.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

What should it have or what will it have??

Because I doubt there will be any debate if we are asking what actions lawmakers will be spurned into. They'll do what they've been doing.... Absoutely nothing

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

Privately run armories and limited guns and ammunition in a household.

I can't possibly disagree with your more. When Malvo & John Allen Muhammad went on their sniper spree in 2002 there was nary a mention of Nation of Islam or Jamaat al-Fuqra. Even after John Allen Muhammad's arrest he admitted Osama Bin Laden was a hero to him. There are other examples but that one stands out.

However, it seems at the moment we have a lone gunman of some Asian descent.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

I'm not sure what type of "lasting effect" that is we can expect here. Yes this is tragic. One individual had the ability to end the lives of dozens of others. The instrument he used was a handgun.

To put it in the bluntest terms, this is simply a byproduct of technology. Technology has allowed this to occur. When we were cavemen and somebody snapped, they might club people or bash them with a rock. As time passed, a crazed maniac could use a knife or a sword. Now, firearms or explosives are the crackpots' desmesne.

Let's say we take away this particular avenue of technology. Let's say we banned all handguns tomorrow. We initiated an effort to collect guns. Would this particular event have been avoided? Maybe, but not likely. Suicide bombers are killing dozens in Iraq. It could certainly be done here. All it takes is a trendsetter.

We don't know if this particular guy followed applicable law. In Virginia, he could not have purchased his two guns (if reports are correct) within 30 days of each other. There would have been a criminal background check if he legally owned the guns and bought it at a gun shop.

In Virginia, guns are not required to be registered, so we might not know how this guy got his gun. Virginia does allow concealed carry, but only by permit. Of course, it is illegal to take a gun into a school (including a university), so the guy was breaking the law well before shooting anybody.

My expected response to this is a knee jerk reaction to pass more gun laws, even if this guy already broke them to obtain his weapons. There is a real possibility that the current laws were not followed here, which obviously means we need more laws to not enforce.

Firstly, before the debate and resulting bickering begins, allow me to say how horrific it is, and how sad and disgusting this event is.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?
Too soon to tell. Certainly a major investigation is required.


2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

State lawmakers in VA may want to consider campus security. Certainly it seems ther was none here. We have plenty of gun laws. Enforcement is the key


3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?
Armed security.

I'd like to think that this will stay in the news for a substantial period of time, but it won't. I expect a barrage of news coverage about the shooting, gun control and campus security for 3 solid weeks, then coverage will start to wane, then wane a little more, then a celebrity will OD or get married and that will be "news" for a month.

Well, I'd like to think that the state of Virginia will do something with regards to campus security on Universities that it runs. It isn't to much of the taxpayers to ask that the State have the capability to protect students on its own property. Who has heard of a shooting that happened in two segments TWO HOURS APART? In my view, the issue here is gun control related at all, it's purely a security issue. A man was able to freely run around government property with two guns shooting people at will for two hours before he got tired and KILLED HIMSELF. If there is even a faint hint of competent security at Va-Tech, lives are saved.

More security on campus, improved communication between the Administration and students [students weren't made aware of the shooting until 15 minutes after it had ended] and several campus police hubs spread out among campus.

CP

This is truly a national tragedy. It's so sad to see that people who freely have a right to bear arms might take that right and pervert freedom only to turn the gun on innocent, unarmed human beings. It all makes me sick.

I also agree that it might be too early to understand what impact this might have on the nation. There are so many things we don't yet understand such as a real motive. Although at the moment it seems like a simple, nauseating school shooting, let us not rule out terrorism until a full investigation is completed. We have no evidence to believe at this time that it could be a terrorist attack, we can't rule out anything until the investigation is really rolling. As it is information has been leaked in a slow, subtle manner with few details, so I'll wait to find out what really happened before I pass these kinds of judgements.

Vladmire,

The debate over whether or not the 2nd amendment applies only to well regulated militias is on going and no where near academically settled. The revolutionary militias themselves were often times very loose knit groups of individuals called minute-men who were not well regulated. It seems hard to believe that the founding fathers meant that only people in well regulated militias had the right to bear arms, yet they allowed almost any American to own guns.

I'd like to add that the worst non-war, gun-related massacre on American soil took place in Waco, Texas (if memory serves, over seventy people died there), in an effort to enforce a law on gun control.

The very bloodiest US school massacre,the Bath school disaster, happened in the 1920s and it was a bombing incident. There are plenty of massacres in other countries as well, some involve guns some don't. The one in Erfurt Germany took more lives than Columbine, and the Port Arthur massacre in Australia took more lives than this recent tragedy.

This incident is awful, but no more so than some equally crazed individual who might decide to poison the food at the lunchroom or drive a school bus off a bridge. People do violent things. They do violent things here, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa and in the Middle East.

As Virginia Tech is my alma mater...

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

I basically agree with CP. Eventually, this will be superseded by other news. I'm not sure this is necessarily bad though. We can't dwell on one event, no matter how tragic, forever. Still, moving on without doing some serious analysis and "soul searching" would be bad.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

Better campus security may have helped here. The VaTech security folks are known to be ineffective. Would gun control have helped? I'm not sure. I think Amlord makes a good case about how we can never assure our safety through more laws. However, clearly, some laws make more sense than others. I'm gonna side with better enforcement of the current laws with one caveat: I think there ought to be some sort of mandatory licensing and purchasing registration system. Yes, this doesn't prevent criminals who work hard enough from getting illicit guns, but it does create a speed bump.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

Um... These will continue to happen. The whole murder-suicide thing is all the rage these days, dontcha know. Now, if there were some early indication of psychological state of this person, perhaps intervention would have helped.

I'm going to take a middle position on this. I don't think it's too early to start the thread, but in depth analysis will come later. As information becomes available we will know why this happened. We will be able to compare and contrast it with other mass murders.

We will learn from this, but the sad part is I don't think we can prevent something like this from happening again.

I agree, the death numbers have changed, the number of people involved, not to mention whether or not the two shootings were connected. I was driving home and listened to a local talk radio station where they attempted to talk about this, talking about the need to not over speculate.

I just got off the phone with a close friend who lives in Blacksburg. It seems pretty likely it was just a lone shooter and that shooter was a student who was probably taking an Econ class in Norris Hall at that time (as it was that class which bore the brunt of the murders). Most likely he "went" to class. Also, it seems like the earlier murders in the the AJ dorm were jilted-lover related.

I'm more shaken up about this than I thought I would be (I have attended classes in that very building). The curious can see this webcam video of the shooting. ** I should note that this video takes place outside the building (you can hear the shots and people screaming).

[/quote]I don't know. I would hope that it would be an occasion to consider national and state gun policy. Just once I wish that one of these maniacs, instead of killing 15 innocent people in Topeka or whereever, would take himself and his weapons to the national offices of the NRA in Washington DC and let loose there. Yes, I said that. There is no general right to bear arms. The 2nd Amendment ties the bearing of arms to its utility to "a well-regulated militia."They can't be entirely avoided. It's a disease in our culture. I am well aware that some mass killings, notably the Texas tower massacre, were committed with hunting rifles. But in general, a restrictive ban on handguns and automatic weapons would go a long way to suppress the rate of murder in the U.S., and would probably prevent some mass killings.

Of course, hardened criminals would still find a way to get guns, but that does not contradict what I have said.[quote]

Gun control contributed to the slaughter in Topeka. How many potential victims would have taken personal responsibility for their self defense if their campus was not a posted victim disarmament zone. "no guns on campus." Is it truly your position that in order to protect ourselves from hardened criminals, we should limit our ability (tools) needed to protect ourselves?

I submit the following example on Jan. 16, 2002 Appalachian Law School suffered a similar attack, the shooter took a .380-caliber pistol to the offices of Dean L. Anthony Sutin and Prof. Thomas Blackwell and killed them before opening fire on a crowd, killing student Angela Dales, 33, and wounding three others. Odighizuwa was subdued without incident by armed students.

Note the 2 armed students subdued the attacker without shooting him. How many victims did they save, I don't know. But I believe they would not have been able to subdue the attacker by using harsh language.

The 2nd Amendment does not require you to be armed. It does permit me to be. The 1st Amendment permits us to disagree. I wouldn't change a thing.

It was a 23 year old Chinese exchange student. May have killed his girlfriend first.

It seems ludicrous that the school was not locked down and an armed officer not sent to EVERY room where a large number of students were. Some day schools and other places where lots of people gather will wake up and realize they need full time, competent armed security.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

I think lots of schools will take a serious look at their security procedures, and ability to respond to/prevent such an act.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

I'm not sure I'd welcome this. While setting some kind of standard protocol for responding to such events might be worthwhile, we don't need an OSHA designed horse here.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

They can't. If anything, it's becoming easier and easier for an individual to conduct such an act. Security precautions will increase, but so will the ability of people to commit mass carnage.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

The death toll would have been much, much lower if more students in the building had been armed. The perp would have been incapacitated after firing only a round or two instead of hundreds. As long as good people choose to remain defenseless, they will be easy targets for bad guys. One or two well-aimed bullets could have stopped the body count at 3 or 4 before it had the chance to escalate to 30 or 40.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

Hopefully, university antigun regulations will be declared unconstitutional. High schools should ban weapons from campus, but should also be required to teach gun safety and marksmanship in kinesiology classes. Colleges should actively encourage more college students to maintain licenses, improve skills, and carry weapons on campus. Sadly, I doubt the right action will be taken. Too few politicians on either side have enough wisdom to understand that the best defense against wanton violence is an armed, trained populace.

Politicians and propagandists from both parties will pounce on the opportunity to use this incident to rally their special-interest groups. Michael Moore and organized crime will lobby the left for gun bans to disarm all law-abiding citizens, which will make crime easier; they may even succeed in many "blue" state legislatures. The anti-gun cabal will probably call its federal legislation the "Virgina Tech Anti-Massacre Bill" or some other false advertisement. They might even attempt to repeal the second amendment. The right will probably do little except to shout back, but even if Republicans were to try to craft federal legislation, it would be killed in committees controlled by Democrats. Either way, the populace is likely to remain unarmed and easy prey for criminals for a long time to come.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

It is a lasting issue, but the media don't usually focus on lasting issues. The "news" is there to report what's "new", so we'll hear about this off and on until there's nothing "new" about it to report, then it will vanish from "news" into politics, history, and the occasional year-in-review feature story. In the long run, it may be mentioned about as often as Columbine.

Unfortunately, it's basically impossible to "lock down" a university campus. It was not unreasonable for police to assume that the dorm murders were the end of it. Almost all murderers do their deed and run. Tragically, this was not the case this time.

The massive police response came from all over the area. Blacksburg is in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The nearest city, Roanoke, is ~40 minutes away. It takes time to marshal enough forces to react. By the time such reaction occurred the slaughter and suicide was already underway. Now, if you're proposing that armed security be in the buildings in force all the time, then I suppose what you are suggesting would be possible. I wonder at the cost of such a proposal.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

We might try reversing the culture of disrespect of human life that permeates our society. Other than that, I would suggest that you learn how to handle, fire, clean, and store [and well] a small but lethal firearm [and remember, as always here, you aim for the center of your target].



Next item, this rather extraordinary statement:

"There is no general right to bear arms."

And since when did I surrender my right to self-defense? So, excuse me, but unless you're playing Presidential bodyguard here and are going to throw your body in front of mine to stop that bullet, please don't even think of dictating to me just what I might be entitled to keep and bear in order to preserve my life.

2 Weeks - tops.

I certainly hope not. Clearly this is something outside the ability of legislation.

More people with guns. If the first person he pulled a gun on pulled his own gun out and blew his brains out we'd be talking about one dead person. Instead we're talking about a crazed person with a gun killing innocent unarmed students.

***

I think another facet of this debate is how badly will VA Tech be sued and can the institution remain open after paying millions of dollars to 50 some odd families? I think VA Tech has a massive culpability in this massacre. An email 2 hours after the fact simply doesn't cut it.

It is impossible to say whether some policy would have, or could have, prevented some specific act. But just as many argue that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime, it is possible to argue that strong gun controls, backed up by stiff penalties, would have a deterrent effect on crimes committed with guns. Of course maniacs bent on killing people could still, with determined effort, get possession of firearms. But we have no valid supposition that these mass killing sprees are the outcome of long-planned, determined action. In many cases they seem to be the almost random outcome of transient rage. It seems a valid supposition, therefore, that some of these incidents would be prevented if handguns and automatic weapons were very hard to come by.

Such a policy does not have to prevent all gun crimes to be effective, any more than the death penalty needs to prevent all murders to be hypothetically effective.

All right, you can kill a lot of people with a deer rifle or a pump action shotgun, but if you're carrying a rifle or a shotgun around campus, people tend to see you coming. That's why I think that a ban on private ownership of handguns plus fully automatic weapons makes a great deal of sense in this country. Nobody needs a handgun to go hunting (though there may be a few total idiots doing that, for all I know), and anybody who needs to defend his home can make very effective use of a shotgun, more effective use in fact than of a handgun.



Right, let's live a world where everyone, even 18-year-old violin students, totes heavy iron. Do you really have enough trust in the good judgement people, including seriously unhappy people, frustrated people, people cut off in traffic by some EDIT, and people who've had a little too much to drink, to want to live in that world? Do you think there would be more murders, or less, if we all walked around with Glock 9mms strapped on our hips?

Oh and right, some engineering student is right sure to draw on some lunatic who has the drop on him, and squeeze off accurately on a human being for the first time in his life, in the second before the lunatic shoots. Right. You know what Joe Dokes does if he has a gun in one of these situations? He runs and hides just like everyone else, and uses the gun only if he has to to save himself. Life isn't a Bruce Willis movie. So even if quite a few people packed heat, a determined lunatic could still kill a lot of innocent people. But that would be their fault, of course, for not going armed themselves!

Edited to remove attempt at bypassing profanity filter - Jaime

I do not recall at the moment who it was that said, "An armed society is a polite society," but I would point out that a polite society isn't the same thing as a safe society. By extension, a society whose civility extends only to the length of a gun barrel isn't much of a society at all.

By all means; let's have more guns, not less. And don't stop at college campuses. Send your kid to pre-school with a nice, small, but efficient handgun. Make those quick trips to the grocery store an opportunity for adventure. Tired of those lame-o's who can't read pushing a cart loaded up with beer, Twinkies and frozen pizza through the "10 Items or Less" check-out lane? Pull out your "little friend" and enforce the policy.

It'll bring a whole new meaning to the "clean up on Aisle five" overhead message.

Because my post described safety benefits in detail, but had nothing to do with politeness or civility, I fail to see any connection between my post and this particular response, other than we agree that politeness and civility are completely separate issues from empowering dozens of people to survive the rampages of homocidal sociopaths.

In my post, I addressed the issue of a minimum age and keeping guns out of high schools except for training-- perhaps you missed it. At any rate, the only possible slippery-slope argument to be made is that decreases in gun ownership have been accompanied by increases in mass murder. Given the demonstrable preference criminals have for defenseless victims, it is hardly a post hoc fallacy to suggest the phenomenon is no coincidence.

Maybe other families of murder victims have a more morbid sense of humor than I do, but I find jokes at their expense in extremely bad taste; every day, but particularly today.

I'm not surprised you fail to see any connection, Seamus. I fail to see any correlation between more guns and more security. I find your nonsensical notion that if everyone is armed to the teeth, everybody's safe, to be absurd. You jump to a conclusion without any correlating facts. All you are doing is plugging in your own preconceived notions. If you choose to live in fear on the remote chance you might be caught in a situation of mass slaughter, go for it. You're more likely to be murdered by someone you know and love than you are by a rampaging gunman. Living in fear of unlikely situations is no way to live at all.



You know what I find to be in bad taste? The suggestion that if the students at Virginia Tech were strapped to the max they might be alive today. By that twisted logic, if the people in the Twin Towers had parachutes they might be alive today as well.

Morbid humor is a defense device to cope with the horrors of the world and the monsters that reach out to drag others down with them. You deal with your emotions your way and let me deal with mine my way. Bad taste is in the eye of the beholder.

There are no easy answers but I'd ferociously reject what appears to be the obvious one. The ultimate form of failure is not 30+ dead, it is being reminded of the fact on a daily basis by an armed security guard. Worse still is having every second student come loaded for bear. This is definitely not the right answer. I'd far rather impose a blanketing law on all firearms for the town than incur the cost of a trigger happy rent-a-cop force. I think it is high time to challenge the right to bear arms - now.

One of the larger problems the Tougher Gun Laws/Ban Guns folk are going to have in this discussion is that it _seems_ as if Cho Seung-Hui had obtained the guns legally. Further Cho Seung-Hui did not show up to VA Tech with an AK-47 he showed up with a .22 and .9mm. Banning firearms isn't going to work. This country is too big and no one (who actually can) is going to even suggest overturning the 2nd Amendment.

The Founding Fathers were quite ingenious and spent a considerable amount of time making sure The Constitution and Bill Of Rights contained excellent and somewhat wide language. Taking guns from the citizenry of the USA is such a bad idea it will never gain traction. Pro gun people will simply point to Prohibition and any useful discourse on the topic will be instantly nullified. Frankly do YOU trust the US Gov't to be the only people with guns?

Make no mistake I'm not a bazooka in every kitchen proponent. In fact, I think personal ownership of AK-47s, M16s, UZIs, etc is completely unnecessary. However, I fully understand the "slippery slope" argument the Super Pro Gun folks will make against my proposal.

It seems very likely that Cho Seung-Hui was going to kill a lot of people no matter how he did it. You can't stop crazy. Unless someone kills him before he kills himself.

Ah, but the notion that the absense of one kind of deadly weapon would prevent anyone bent on murder from picking up some other kind of deadly weapon is ludicrous. I agree that we shouldn't be dispensing guns from vending machines. I wouldn't mind it if a gun license were to require at least as much training and demonstration of skill as a driver's license.

Were it not for the second amendment siding with me, the deterrent effect of an armed populace would have to be objectively weighed against the deterrent effect of a gun ban. Criminals obviously don't mind breaking laws, therefore criminals don't mind breaking the law to get guns. Gun bans therefore turn law-abiding citizens into "sitting ducks". Our founding fathers were well aware of that. In fact, it was Britain's attempt to enforce a gun ban in their American colonies that turned their civil disobedience into a shooting war. The second amendment wasn't any more of an afterthought than the first.

Would a gun ban have averted the Virginia Tech massacre? No. The perp was a foreigner here on a student visa, so he couldn't legally buy guns in Virginia, not even at trade shows; Va. mandates an instant check. So one way or another, this particular criminal obtained the guns illegally. Indeed, this particular sociopath counted on the defenselessness of his victims, and shot himself as soon as he saw people with guns approaching.

I have no objection to laws prohibiting people from packing heat when underaged, intoxicated, medicated, under treatment for depression, with a history of violence, etc. Similar regulations apply to driving cars, which many people drive. Should we ban automobiles and other forms of transportation because occasionally they're used as murder weapons?

If we're all trained in their proper use and keep current on proficiency requirements to maintain our licenses, then there would be FAR fewer murders.

If gun training were part of obtaining a license, then Joe Dokes would most likely be as capable of firing a round under pressure as most WWII draftees; sure, many of us would freeze, but in a roomful of 30 people with gun training, I'd be willing to bet at least one would be cool-headed.

In the Virginia Tech case, one prof (a holocaust survivor) ushered his students out a window to save their lives, but he died. In the room with the most casualties, four students managed to block a door to prevent the gunman from coming back in. In another classroom, two guys saved ten lives by barracading the door-- even after shooting off the knob, the gunman couldn't get in. Overall, good people respond to intense situations much better than we give ourselves credit for.

With a bomb, perhaps, but a gunner being able to shoot down 30-40 people when 20 of them are armed would be highly unlikely. He might get off one or two fatal shots before being incapacitated.

It would be completely unfair to try to twist BA's stance into such a callous, insensitive accusation, Vlad, don't you think?

Gunman named

Cho Seung-hui, 23, from South Korea, was in the 4th year of his studies. Police say they haven't ruled out another gunman, but that at one of the guns found on Seung-hui's corpse was used in both the 7.15 am dorm attack, and the 9.15 am classroom shootings. He was a legally resident alien (presumably on a student visa).

As yet they haven't released information on precisely how many guns he had, of what model, and whether they were legally

So while it's not impossible, early speculation that his "Asian-ness" means he's more likely to be the common-or-garden, off-the-rails gun nut than anything to do with Islamic terrorism.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?

Frankly I doubt it. If Congress tried, the President would likely veto it to keep fans ot the 2nd amendment on side. But I doubt if Congress would even try, since part of the recent electoral success of the Democrats has been to reach out to the sort of people likely to resist stronger controls on gun use and ownership. They aren't going to throw that away when they are hoping to win control over the executive as well as the legislature in the medium term.

So nothing much will happen, politically at any rate, which means the national and international media will get bored ("no change" makes for no headlines) and move on.

What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?

As I said before, I doubt it will have much effect.

One area I think might be pursued is to restrict the gun ownership rights of legally resident aliens and other non-citizens, which might make the more paranoid feel a little better but is the legislative equivalent of trying to cure a brain tumour with Elastoplast.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?

I'm not sure. A few years ago, I would have said the obvious answer was to ban gun ownership. Back then, however, I didn't understand quite how central that idea is to the American psyche. People may kill people, but they would find it nearly impossible to kill 30 or so people in as many minutes with a knife or a bow & arrow*, if for no other reasons than bows having much lower rates of fire, and people being able to run or dodge a knife much easier than they can a knife.

I recall a British would-be multiple killer visiting a junior school with a machete shortly before the Firearms Amendment was passed in response to the Dunblane Massacre.

While he tried to kill as many children as Thomas Hamilton, and many were horribly wounded, Horrett Campbell killed nobody. From which I concluded, loonie with guns = dead kids; loonie without guns = no dead kids. Therefore, ban guns.

By and large, I would say that the ban has worked, despite large percentages increases in urban gun crime in recent years. (The increases are only large in percentage terms, overall murder rates are broadly stable, and an order of magnitude lower than in the USA. And I don't think there is any link between the ban on legal guns and the increase in use illegal ones, but that's probably for another thread.)

But after some years on , and some thought, a simple ban, or even extended control, just wouldn't work.

For a number of reasons. Politically, it would be nigh-on impossible to legislate. Even if that were not the case, the gun lobby would mobilise massive support, based on that centrality to the psyche I talked about.

And even if someone could magically remove all the practical obstacles, Americans faced with an agressive stranger would assume that they are armed much more often than other nationalities. (This, I think, is the root of the idea that you could stop these multiple shootings by arming everybody else, with no thought to the other possible consequences.)

Even with our supposedly higher rates of gun violence since handgun ownership was banned in Britain (which is highly localised to innner city drug gangs, and even then is at rates that most American law enforcement agencies would be more than happy with), your average Brit would tend to assume that a hostile stranger is NOT armed, certainly not with a gun.

I think guns are tied up in the way Americans feel about themselves and one another in a way unique in the world, and I don't think any kind of ban could be sold to the public.



*Of course, suicide bombing is comparable, especially where the perpetrator also wants to die, but (as far as we know) this method has not yet been adopted by disaffected youths trying to get back against imagined personal slights from people at their schools or colleges, but by disaffected youths trying to get back at imagined political slights from people in their own or foriegn nations.

I don't like it when people make the argument that a well armed populace is a safer populace. I don't think it takes (to use the absurd extreme) armed five year olds to make society safer.

However, I am a strong 2nd amendment advocate. That amendment was specific about why it was implemented: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This power was intended as a method for resisting the oppression of the government. Of course, today, that power has been conceded by many.

Noah Webster wrote:


Technology and complacency has changed this dynamic over the years. But the premise remains: the citizens must retain the ability to resist federal oppression.

Self defense has always been a separate issue, although related. So long as there is an outside threat, the individual retains the right to defend himself. There is some merit to the argument that these people were gunned down because they were not prepared to defend themselves. It isn't a very PC argument, but it is logical. Of course, the counter argument could be made that the gunman took them unaware in a place they did not think would be dangerous.

The bottom line is that the government does not have the power (George Bush bashers aside) to be everywhere and supervise the activities of everyone and more importantly to ensure the safety of each and every individual in the United States. Self defense has always been a right in common law. More than a right, it should be an expectation.

Nothing extraordinary about it. In this country of ours, citizens do not enjoy a general right to bear arms. Just read the 2nd Amendment; it says right there in black and white that that the right to bear arms is conditional on the usefullness of this to a well-regulated militia. Those three words were not put there idly.

Your right of self defense I do not dispute, but I do not join you in your assumption that your carrying a handgun is necessary to that. Personally I would consider minor exceptions to a general ban of handguns if a person's business put him in situations where a handgun might reasonably save his life. But you can defend your home well enough with a shotgun.

It really is a silly fantasy that some ordinary citizen is going to be able to draw and shoot accurately at another human being, however threatening, in the heat of the moment. I opine that there are very few people capable of doing that, or even inclined to do it if they were carrying.

Finally I object to the idea of your, or any ordinary citizen's, carrying a handgun since this gun would more likely be used to produce tragedies than to avoid them. A very typical U.S. murder is that some ordinary drunken guy, not a hardened criminal, gets in a fight in a bar, goes out to his car and gets his gun, and either goes back in and wastes someone or stands around and ambushes them when they come out. Personally I would rather not live in a society where being shot through the head is a reasonably likely consequence of offending some drunk. The other very common thing that happens to ordinary citizen's handguns, of course, is that they get stolen and used by real criminals.

I have nothing against long guns normally used for sporting purposes, and I am 100% for hunter's rights. But widespread ownership of handguns is a very bad thing.

I believe in the right of dissent and the right to succeed if the current group is not performing to your expectations. Sounds a little frankaphonish but it is true. I believe in the idea of breaking up central control of all 50 states and starting over every other decade as a reminder that corruption has a price and so does taxation.

I believe 99% of the people out do not possess the maturity and judgement to effectively use a firearm with any form of discretion. Skill is another topic unto itself. We will have to agree to disagree.

I do agree this is most likely an aberration, an isolated incident but I'd hate to be principal telling the families nothing will be done....that could get interesting. The call to to something will be so great there will be little to no emphasis on repercussions.

The other guy is less likely to pull his trigger while staring down the barrel of another gun. If you find that absurd, consider that the VT perp shot himself as soon as he saw other people with guns approaching.

Hmm... that's how I perceived your post. The only thing you said about safety was that "a polite society isn't the same thing as a safe society" in repsonce to someone else's quote about politeness. Okay, that's an assertion, but without any facts or reasoning to support why my assertions about safety are incorrect. Maybe someone is projecting, perhaps?

Absolutely correct. Don't live in fear of guns-- get one and learn to use it. You'll live in a whole lot less fear, not more fear.

Our ranch has been in our family for about six generations now. Over time, the land's been divided among dozens and dozens of families, all related (if distantly) and close friends. Everyone in the county is well-armed, and always have been. The only gun violence in 100 years has been in self defense against armed intruders, on several occasions; any domestic violence has taken other forms. There's the occasional gun cleaning injury, but nothing worse than accidents with any other tool. The usual targets are coyotes attacking our cattle, and the occasional deer or rabbit in season.

There's nothing scarier about living with guns almost everywhere than with automobiles almost everywhere. In fact, automobiles are far deadlier than guns, but nobody's seriously suggesting a ban of cars, even though we'd save far more lives that way, without quite so directly violating the constitution.

I have been quick to point out from my first usage of the phrase that whenever I refer to a "well-armed populace", I also mean they should be armed with the training and licensing appropriate to responsible usage of arms. I disagree that armed five-year-olds would make society any safer at all-- underaged, irresponsible firearm abuse is obviously more dangerous, not safer. Arming the five-year-old's parents or guardians (with guns and the requisite safety and skill training) does, however, tend to improve safety/deter crime. Otherwise, Secret Service security details and other armed bodyguards would probably not exist.

Although I agree that expecting college students to pack heat in class is somewhat over-the-top in modern society, the question asked "How can such massacres be avoided in the future?", and I believe "more trained citizens carrying guns" is a better answer than "police in every room". Yes, guns are dangerous, but with the proper training, they're far less dangerous than cars.

I agree and have a similar experience when I was a kid who went to northern Maine every summer. In the small towns there all the kids from 12 up are armed and shoot. The gun crime in the town was zero. The fact that a gun was used here points out the problem with having lots of people on a campus and no armed security. It is totally illegal on this campus to have a gun. Thus the man with a gun has free reign. Add this to the total stupidity of the cops and campus administration and you get tragedies like this. And as has been pointed out more people have been killed by nuts in the US and elsewhere by other means.

Clearly there should have been armed security on this and every campus. Any violence at all should be met with a lockdown and search by armed men for the perpetrator. Certainly if this had been done this tragedy would have been avoided. They had 2 hours to find this man and blew it. The “assumed” he left the campus.

As we get into the usual witch hunt of guns lets remember that VA has more liberal laws than my state of Mass. Yet Mass, has twice the gun crime. Same for DC, Camden NJ, Philly etc. Guns do not ensure gun crime but as seamus has pointed out they can prevent it. If just once in all the time this fool was walking around he met an armed person it could have ended.

I can agree with a lot of this - but do you think that compulsory training before being allowed to own a gun, and a licensing system with the possibility of revocation in the event of misuse (the logical conclusions of a requirement for training, and the analogy you draw to cars, surely?) would fly with the American public?

I mean, in some states, there is strong resistance to the idea of even a 48 hour cooling off period, let alone a training regimen that might take days, weeks or even months (depending on competence).

I am not trying to be facetious - I think some form of training or licensing might be a sensible way forward.

I would be in favor of this as well: including periodic refresher courses. Seamus has brought up the automobile analogy which is apt, in my opinion. Driving automobiles requires a license. I don't believe it is unreasonable to do the same for guns.

Actually, I fully agree with most of what you say about guns in general. The only thing is, nobody needs hand guns and nobody needs automatic weapons exept for one thing, and that is, killing other people. We can have a lovely idyll of ranch life in Wyoming, and hunt elk and rabbits to our heart's content, all with perfectly ordinary rifles and shotguns. I never heard of anyone hunting with a Browning 45 or Mac-10, have you? It is the latter sort of gun that should be strictly regulated, and I believe it would have a good effect on gun violence.

Oh, and as for home defence, give me a relatively short 12 gauge every time.

The Cartridge Family

Gun Shop Owner: Sorry, the law requires a five-day waiting period. We've got to run a background check.
Homer: Five days? But I'm mad now!

**

Homer: I'd kill you if I had my gun!
Gun Shop Owner: Yeah, well, you don't.
Homer: [walking out of store to his car] Lousy big shot, thinks he's so big 'cause he's got a lot of guns, if he didn't have any guns I'd show him a thing or two...

Sure, that’s exactly what we need; a heavily armed, paranoid populace. Yep, if all the students had been armed, ONLY the guilty part would have been shot. The armed student who shot the guilty one would never be mistaken for the original, who then may have been shot by another student, who may be shot by another, etc. etc. Yes, every armed student would know EXACTLY which person was the guilty one and never EVER would have shot the wrong person in panic and/or by mistake.

Please.

If I'm not mistaken, Daffy, that's an amazingly extravagent strawman. All Seamus said was that the death toll would have been lower had the classrooms that were attacked contained armed students. If you continuously walk into a classroom of 20 armed students and begin shooting, how long do you think it'll take before someone shoots you? Two hours? I don't think so. There's no doubt in my mind that had there been a more armed populace at Va-Tech the death toll would have been lower; but I don't think that's the issue. The reason why 32 people died was due to Virginia Tech's Administration and its incompetency, not because of guns.

CP

Well I have to disagree on handguns. We have the right to self defense and the handgun is best for this. Handguns are also used by hunters as backup guns (usually in big calibers). Handguns are effective when used by women who would be unlikely to enjoy handling a long rifle or shotgun. All the kids I hung around with in Maine had rifles, shotguns AND handguns.

Try concealing a shotgun. Concealed carry, legal in most states has and will continue to reduce crime. In a society with a 60 billion $$$ drug problem and violent criminals dumped on the street again and again I maintain my right to own and carry a handgun when I feel it is necessary and to keep one in my home that I or my wife can use.

As far as “automatic weapons” – please define. You might know that in most cases they are illegal. Do you mean “semi-automatic” as in most hand guns?

Below from John Lott on a similar situation to VA shooting. He is at - http://www.johnrlott.com/



Edited to remove fully quoted article in accordance with forum Rules. - Jaime

You know as well as I do that if the Vermont separatist movement gathered enough political steam to secede the Union and “stop being part of an empire” their little rebellion would violently and unquestionably be put down through superior brute force from the federal government with most of the Union standing by watching former fellow Americans die. The premise is a poetic illusion supporting gun rights, but an illusion no less. How many patriotic Americans came to Waco’s defense with more than just words?

Why did Iraqi rebels with guns, rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades fail to unseat Hussein in the 1991 uprisings? Besides being vastly overpowered by a state-run military, rebels weren’t willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their families to the cause. This undermines the argument that access to weapons provides citizens an opportunity to resist oppression. If an uprising refuses to embrace an organized retaliation that will demand sacrificing more than their lives all the guns in the world don’t matter.

Iraq’s resolve isn’t a problem today. Despite Berger’s gun bans, curfews and censorships, criminals found ways to replace seized caches. This undermines the argument that removing gun ownership rights will make society safer.

There is more to personal safety than outlawing firearms and there is a lot more to securing and retaining freedoms than access to firearms. But first let’s call a spade a spade and declare unequivocally that the United States is nothing short of a legal violence racket where democracy happens to be the form of government. And like any violence racket, the state will use brute force against its own population to defend its authority after the state’s legitimacy is recalled by citizens. The moonbeam and unicorn idea that firearms provide the public with the ability to resist federal oppression might lead to other crazy ideas. The public that believes it has the ability to recall government may also think “temporarily” sacrificing freedoms for security is a safe bet.

What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?
If you’re a states rights rebel and think the Due Process clause/incorporation doesn’t apply to the states, states could, in theory, ban guns. Even if you support federal incorporation imposing limits on state governments and providing a limited number of freedoms I still don’t know how you can argue individual citizens have a constitutional right to firearms as I read the Second Amendment. My reason why is given here.

Still, I’ll take state and federal governments ignoring the Constitution in this case, and I don’t feel the need to parse constitutional history to support my policy preference and avoid being called an activist or other some other politically-motivated idiotic term.

OK, riddle me this.

The US has the most liberal gun laws and the least restrictive gun policy in the First world. Correct?

The US has the highest murder rate of any nation in the first world, double and even triple that of many other first world nations. Correct?

So, first question: Why is that? If it ISN'T guns, then why is it? Canada watches the same TV, plays the same video games and goes to the same movies, yet have a murder rate half that of the US. The UK had 42 gun murders last year, 42. Thats less than most average sized cities in the US. So if it's NOT rampant gun availability, then what is it?


Next: It has been posited that MORE guns would make people safer. Well, unless there is an answer to question 1 above that is logical and reasonable, that would appear to be patently false. However, let's take that issue a step further.

The US has had 19 multiple school shooting in the last 10 years. There is a mass shooting in the US, inside and outside schools, every couple months on average. It is reaching the point where unless the death toll is high, or there is something curious about the tale (for example, the victims were Amish) it doesn't even make headline news for long.

So, Second Question: given this massive availability of guns in the US, AND given the frequency of these mass shooting, in schools and without, can ANYONE cite me a SINGLE example of a cse where a mass shooting was cut off by an armed civilian killing the shooter? I did a Google search, and came up with just one, an incident at a McDonalds over a decade ago, and the victim wasn't even shot.

So if guns make you safer, why the frequency of shootings in the most liberal gun culture in the western world, and why the lack of these mass shooters being stopped by the armed populace?

Simple- who had the worlds biggest illegal drug market?? US. Who apprehends and prosecutes the fewest criminals and lets them out the soonest?? The US. Who has the most un-enforced gun laws in the world – US. Who has the worst immigration problems? US. Gangs – US.

See the trend?

The very fact that there is ZERO correlation to the number of guns in the hands of citizens in an area and gun crime should be a clue. In fact the correlation is negative. Fewer guns legally held by citizens = higher gun crime - Wash DC is the perfect example.

I'm sure there are several reasons. Our propensity for drug crimes, illegal immigration, etc. What I haven't seen is anything that shows any causation between a large quantity of guns and more crime. Do you have anything that proves that causation?
Mass shootings, perhaps or perhaps not. Here are some examples of armed citizens stopping would be killers though:
Link
Link: Note, the armed person stopping the would be murderer was an off duty police officer.

Vermillion, I have a question for you. Had there been say three armed students in a given classroom, would it have been more likely that the shooter would have gotten out of that room alive, or less likely?

CP