Virginia Tech

[ZeroForever]

I'm sure anyone in the US has heard by now and if you haven't

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech. ... index.html

or any other news site will have it on the front page.

not much to say, it's depressing no matter how you look at it.



Moment of silence for those who died.

[Helel]

I didn't hear about the shootings until chatting with some friends in a class where it was brought up. A few people were even confused about where I went to school (Georgia Tech) and were wondering if I was somehow in Vatech, which made yesterday out to be a freaky day, for sure. That and most the students were Engineering majors, so it stung quite a bit.

Anyways, I'll be going to a rememberance (is that a word? Iunno) ceremony this Friday, and I'd like to urge others that if they have a similar opportunity to do likewise. Those kids didn't deserve a fate like that, and ought to be given a last farewell of kindness.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

The more you hear about this, the more you begin to wish that it could have been prevented. The guy who did this was clearly messed up, had two stalking cases (not taken to trial) and was sent to a mental health facility AND campus psychiatric care.

It could make a good case for gun control, and a TERRIBLE case for giving all teachers/students guns. (I knew a teacher who would just start popping students...)

The case for gun control would be that a person who has been convicted of a felony OR has a record of mental health issues cannot buy a gun. The person would have to have been sent to a mental health facility, not simply seen a psychiatrist.

[Aaron]

The case for gun control would be that a person who has been convicted of a felony OR has a record of mental health issues cannot buy a gun. The person would have to have been sent to a mental health facility, not simply seen a psychiatrist.

The problem with that "case for gun control" is that both of those restrictions already exist. If you have a felony you can't own a firearm legally. If you are committed to any mental institution, you already cant' own a firearm legally. Also, you can't legally own one if you have had a court order for stalking or if you have a misdemeanor for domestic violence.

The problem with any control is that illegally obtaining guns is often cheaper and easier than legally obtaining them.

I really don't think this should be made into a political platform. It was a tragedy, not an excuse to push an ideology.

[Queen Octavia]

A tragedy is something you cannot prevent. As such, this incident was not a tragedy.

If you don't have a good reason for owning a gun, you should not be able to own one, in my opinion. Other people should not have a right to putting my life in danger, end of story.

Am I saying this will stop all future gun related viloence? No.

Am I saying it will more than cut it in half? Yes.

As I see it, the blood of these deaths is not on the gunman's hands, but on the policy makers and public that do too little to stop these incidents.

No excuse should be needed to push the "ideology" of saving people's lives.

[Aaron]

A tragedy is something you cannot prevent. As such, this incident was not a tragedy.

No, a tragedy is "A disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to life." Whether this was preventable or not is irrelevent. Even by your definition, this was a tragedy. There's no reason to believe this guy wouldn't have been able to get a gun illegally and do the same thing. The amount of security that would be required to really prevent this would be near impossible to implement.

Am I saying this will stop all future gun related viloence? No.

Am I saying it will more than cut it in half? Yes.

Try to tell that to Washington DC, Hawaii, and New Jersey, all of which experienced an increase in murder rates after they enacted stricter gun controls.

No excuse should be needed to push the "ideology" of saving people's lives.

Or, in other words, no excuse to exploit the death's of innocent people to push a political agenda.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Let's just keep the topic on the event rather than politics and such, unless Zero doesn't mind. No matter what anyone says about gun control, no one will be right or wrong.

I, for one, am not really touched by this loss. Loss of life happens practically every second of every day. So long as you think that their journey is still ongoing, in whatever medium that that may be, then there really isn't a loss. I wish them better luck wherever they find themselves next.

[Queen Octavia]

Try to tell that to Washington DC, Hawaii, and New Jersey, all of which experienced an increase in murder rates after they enacted stricter gun controls.

I'm pretty sure that unsourced statement is moot. I'm not talking about weak prevention measures are the ineffective compromise that was agreed upon there. What I mean is, if you do not earn your livelihood via the ownership of a gun, it is illegal for you to have one. Since almost no one who owns a gun uses it for their livelihood, this is akin to saying guns are illegal.

"American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States." (Centers for Disease Control)

How you can look at a statistic like that and think nothing is wrong is beyond me. The measures Hawaii tried were used nation wide in Canada, and the results were quite good (Although many complain about the monetary cost). Japan has stricter laws, and they're doing even better.

Canada : US Pop ratio is about 1:9, so 153 Canadian deaths would equate to about 1377 American deaths. So around 3908 extra children are dying every year for your stance. I could compare to Japan's rate, but I think I made my point with Canada.

And on topic, I'm a cold hearted SOB. People die, sometime people I love, and that is that. It annoys me when I think it was unnecessary loss of life though.

[Aaron]

How you can look at a statistic like that and think nothing is wrong is beyond me.

I never said nothing was wrong, nor did I say that gun control was bad, I only responded to your blanket claims on what its effectiveness would be and how it would be able to stop this particular incident (nice try on the whole "how many children is your stance going to kill !!!!!!" rhetoric though, it was very well done). I merely think there is much more to it than simply guns being legal, and there are plenty of sources that show that banning guns don't necessarily prevent gun violence, such as the number of firearm related injuries increasing in England after the banning of guns.

I could go into more detail about it, however, I agree with Nikkou that it should be kept on topic, and this isn't a thread about gun control.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Sorry for bringing it up. So...he technically obtained his gun illegally?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_ ... h_shooting

Here's some information about a video he made. It looks like he compares this to Columbine. Anyone going to watch and comment on it?

I wanted to bring up gun control because I was curious if gun control legislation could have prevented it, and there was also the fact that some legislation would not have prevented him from getting his gun. (He was legally in the United States, had no FELONY CONVICTIONS, was not taken to court in the stalking cases, and had been released from the mental institution.)

[Aaron]

Sorry for bringing it up. So...he technically obtained his gun illegally?

I wanted to bring up gun control because I was curious if gun control legislation could have prevented it, and there was also the fact that some legislation would not have prevented him from getting his gun. (He was legally in the United States, had no FELONY CONVICTIONS, was not taken to court in the stalking cases, and had been released from the mental institution.)

The law states that anyone who has been committed to a mental institution or had a legal degree stating that they are not mentally stable can not own a gun in the US under the Gun Control act of 1968 and, later, in the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986. That's the letter of the law. How the state of Virginia interprets it I don't know, and I don't know how he got his gun.

That doesn't prevent guns from being obtainable illegally without all that much work.

To answer your question, I don't think it would have prevented it, but again, that's not the purpose of this thread to discuss.

[Amber]

I will probabily be starting a Gun control debate in the Soap Box here soon. However my prays go to the families that lost love ones this day and hope such tragedies can be prevented in the future.

The guy who did this hidious crime was a disturbed indiviual.

On another note Thompson is already claoming that Video games made this guy do this ><

[Chibi MitchellTF]

GRAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!


THOMPSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*sighs* Thank you for moving the Gun Control topic. So...anyone watch the video?

[Aaron]

Honestly, I would much rather have video games be the scapegoat rather than who else would likely be a target, that being Asians in general. Video games have quite a bit of precedence for protection now in the courts and there's no real evidence for the correlation. Few people take him seriously anymore and there's not been anything the states have been able to do to do anything to them. I'd much more prefer people blame games for a few weeks until enough news comes out to squash that theory than to take it out on Asians, which situations like this tend to do. People can't do anything real to videogames, they can do far more to Asians.

[Princess Shiko]

Given the nature of the event in question, I will ask that anyone desiring to slug out the politics involved in this question move to the Soap Box. I am not trying to quel interpersonal relations or anything like that, I just don't want to get flame bait in my Tea Room.

That said, my heart goes out to the families of those who were killed, and I do ask for people to show some tact, as we get users from all over. As some of them may be in some way directly or indirectly affected by this turn of events, please show some diplomacy in frank discourse on the subject.