Virginia Tech

[Cutey Kerina]

Btw, it was shown recently that ZERO video games were found in his room.

[Tiaiel]

In Germany, we had this tragedy on the news, too.
I'm sad for every lost life. Life is too short anyway. It is always hard to deal with news about children killing each other.
But somehow, I cannot hate the murder, becouse he is -in a way- a lost life, too. Don't misunderstand me, I wont say that he is a victim himself, but I have the feeling, that no one cared about him properly...


...


Isn't it somehow sadly interesting, how instantly the blame-game started?

[Queen Octavia]

Btw, it was shown recently that ZERO video games were found in his room.

Well, that explains everything. *Glances at my stack of 38 gamecube games*. Hmm, the Wii stack really needs some improvement.

Main thing I find offensive about this incident is how the shooter railed against rich kids, without realizing how rich he himself was compared to so many other people in the world. Too bad he couldnt have just been happy with what he had.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

New information. Including how the heck he was able to get a gun when he had issues. (Because he only had outpatient therapy, it was not put into his background check.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070421/ap_ ... SH5HOs0NUE

[Lucky]

VT is a horrible incendent, and my heart sinks at the thought of some many lifes being ended by such a desterbed man. But what makes me even more sick are people like Jack Tompson who was sitting around this whole time for this, so he could ues it to try and advance his own selfish goals.

Befor the body count even came in he was blaming video games for the the killers issues. When the report came in that the killer had no video games even in his room, It made me happy to see these poor people's lifes weren't uesed for one man's selfish gaines. Now we can morron them, and ues there lifes as a simble that even now there are sick people out there who need our help.

[Snow Dragon]

Jack Thompson was on the case within hours of the event happening, being fielded on some Fox News channel as a "School Shooting Expert".
A few days later, he gets pounded on Hardball when Cho's roommates say that they never saw him play a lot of games. Thompson claims that the killer's roommates "don't know what they're talking about".
His source for Cho's "obssession with Counter-Strike that trained him to kill"? Cho's high school buddies. Cho was a senior in college.
As the evidence mounts that Cho wasn't a real gamer during his college years, Thompson is now claiming that video game violence can resurface years later even if the person stops. It doesn't mesh with a single other theory he's proposed about video game killers, but that's what happens when you enter into an issue with a preconceived conclusion.

On the whole, I really don't think there's anything to say about the "cause" of this matter or how it could have been "prevented". This fellow was pychotic and unstable. He was determined to carry this out and planned it in advance. And he wasn't an American citizen either. This is incident wasn't a product of social ills, entertainment, or faulty legislation. It was an aberration. A crazy person who wasn't quite crazy enough to get himself locked up in advance.

[Snow Dragon]

VT is a horrible incendent, and my heart sinks at the thought of some many lifes being ended by such a desterbed man. But what makes me even more sick are people like Jack Tompson who was sitting around this whole time for this, so he could ues it to try and advance his own selfish goals.

I personally believe you misunderstand poor, deluded Thompson.
People keep saying that Jack Thomspon uses the video game rallying cry for the benefit of his career, without regard for the fact that his crusade against video games has led to dozens of failed cases, challenges to his right to practice law, and his transformation into the laughingstock of the conservative critic community.
Jack Thomspon has not won ONE case against the video game industry, and wastes most of his time railing against and throwing out lawsuits against those people trying to get the Florida Bar to take away his license. His book failed utterly (I bought it used, for a report on video game violence, for less than a buck), and there is speculation that HE actually paid the publisher to publish it. At this point even the media, which has happily featured him as a "expert" is starting to poke holes in him.
I feel sorry for Mr. Thompson. I think he feels true regret and horror at this tragedy like everybody else. And I think he honestly believes that video game developers are actively turning children into murderers for their own profit. But what's saddest of all is that the fellow is so religiously bound to his conclusion that he champions this cause in the face of all rational thought.

BTW, where's this "Soapbox" room?

[Lucky]

VT is a horrible incendent, and my heart sinks at the thought of some many lifes being ended by such a desterbed man. But what makes me even more sick are people like Jack Tompson who was sitting around this whole time for this, so he could ues it to try and advance his own selfish goals.

I personally believe you misunderstand poor, deluded Thompson.
People keep saying that Jack Thomspon uses the video game rallying cry for the benefit of his career, without regard for the fact that his crusade against video games has led to dozens of failed cases, challenges to his right to practice law, and his transformation into the laughingstock of the conservative critic community.
Jack Thomspon has not won ONE case against the video game industry, and wastes most of his time railing against and throwing out lawsuits against those people trying to get the Florida Bar to take away his license. His book failed utterly (I bought it used, for a report on video game violence, for less than a buck), and there is speculation that HE actually paid the publisher to publish it. At this point even the media, which has happily featured him as a "expert" is starting to poke holes in him.
I feel sorry for Mr. Thompson. I think he feels true regret and horror at this tragedy like everybody else. And I think he honestly believes that video game developers are actively turning children into murderers for their own profit. But what's saddest of all is that the fellow is so religiously bound to his conclusion that he champions this cause in the face of all rational thought.

BTW, where's this "Soapbox" room?

I don't got a degree in psychology or any thing, so it's not like I could go all shrink on him and find out. I've always subcribe to the he wants be the "the man" that killes video games is all.

But in the end of the day, the victimes and families deserve more then getting the blam throwen onto other people and things. The blame is solely cho's. The only thing you could do to pervent the problem in the fucher is gun controle. But of course thanks to americas gun culture that would never happen.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

I don't think Gun Control deserves to be the thing to get the blame. It's human nature to second-guess things. There are FAR too many details that provoke an 'if-only'.

For instance, he COULD have been on the database, but a lawyer argued that he shouldn't have been on the database because he only recieved outpatient therapy. If he had been on the database, he would not have been able to buy a gun.

He COULD have been told to recieve care for a specified amount of time, or until someone else deemed it appropriate, but there was no specification like that. So, he simply checked himself out.

Numerous people saw the warning sign, and either ignored it or could have done something, but they either missed them, misinterpreted them, or didn't do enough.

Of course, there was the fact that people picked on him, etc., or he felt like they did, so if that was stopped, maybe he would have gotten to that point...

There are hundreds of "but-ifs"...It's only human nature to look at them. The right thing to do is to try to make sure this never happens again...But the problem is when you misinterpret what would make this never happen again, or would have prevented it from happening in the first place.

I don't even know if there is a right answer. Perhaps the only right answer is that human nature itself needs to be changed. There had to be a way to take away his sorrow and his anger. But with that much sorrow, and that much anger, it would take a power beyond humanity.

[Snow Dragon]

[I don't got a degree in psychology or any thing, so it's not like I could go all shrink on him and find out. I've always subcribe to the he wants be the "the man" that killes video games is all.

I'm sure he does. But that desire to kill video games doesn't come from nowhere. He thinks he's championing a genuine cause.

The blame is solely cho's. The only thing you could do to pervent the problem in the fucher is gun controle. But of course thanks to americas gun culture that would never happen.

So you place blame solely on Cho, but then go on to implicate loose gun laws?
The idea that this incident could be prevented within a free society is ridiculous. The idea that it can be done with such a simple and sweeping measure as gun control more so.
This event was pre-meditated. Cho was determined to do this. He would have found a way, and the only mitigating factor was the probability of his getting caught before he could pull it off.
Crazy people exist. If we're going to allow them their basic rights and freedoms, and we should, then we live with the risk of suffering at their hands. We don't live in a perfect world.