Deadliest school shooting in U.S. History has just occured.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

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

Story is still developing. What the hell.

[Americangothic]

I've been listening to NPR ...sounds like who ever did it was well trained and knew what they were doing.

[Nyke]

And scapegoats in 3... 2... 1...

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I will refrain from comments about the shooter till we know more about who this person is. Though I will say that guns are the weapons of cowards.

And why in the hell weren't classes cancelled after the first incident? The 2 shootings were 2 hours apart.

[Noise Monkey]

undoubtedly someone will lose their job over this. probably not the person who should.

[Kirb]

I've been following this story for a while now. Tragic stuff.

Apparently, the guy barged into a classroom, shot the teacher first, and started firing shots from a .22 pistol at the students. I believe he's been confirmed as an Asian-American 20-something year old. They'll probably have his ID by tonight. My guess is disgruntled student.

And why in the hell weren't classes cancelled after the first incident? The 2 shootings were 2 hours apart.

I agree. What a retarded decision.

[Dracomax]

Though I will say that guns are the weapons of cowards.

not that I'm dissagreeing, but that implies that there are other, non-cowardly weapons. what would these be?

Honestly, walking into a school with any weapon intending to harm others is a cowardly act.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Though I will say that guns are the weapons of cowards.

not that I'm dissagreeing, but that implies that there are other, non-cowardly weapons. what would these be?

Honestly, walking into a school with any weapon intending to harm others is a cowardly act.

I don't condone killing innocent people, but attacking someone with your fist or a knife means you have to get close, possibly allowing the target to defend themselves. Guns allow you to stand from afar in a safe spot and kill people in mass quanitites with a minimum of skill. That's cowardly.

[Kirb]

not that I'm dissagreeing, but that implies that there are other, non-cowardly weapons. what would these be?

Honestly, walking into a school with any weapon intending to harm others is a cowardly act.

I don't condone killing innocent people, but attacking someone with your fist or a knife means you have to get close, possibly allowing the target to defend themselves. Guns allow you to stand from afar in a safe spot and kill people in mass quanitites with a minimum of skill. That's cowardly.

That's called efficiency; It pays to get the upperhand. No one ever said combat was fair or honorable.

At least not anyone alive today.

[/derailment]

I think you've confused the situation as combat instead of massacre.

[Prettysenshi]

As a college student, this just reminds me of how open and vulnerable college campuses are. Like at my university, University of South Carolina, literally anyone can walk into your classrooms and dormitories. Sure, you'd need someone to sign them in to enter a person's room, but they still can get into the building.

It really hurts me that such things like this occur in schools. No one should feel like their life is being threatened in a school, in my honest opinion. It's a really sad day.

That being said, yeah, it was fucking stupid that VT didn't cancel classes after the first shooting. Hell, if I heard there was a shooting going on within MY campus, I wouldn't even leave my room. That's just me.

[Nicotine]

I just heard about this about two hours ago. Very shocking (which is even an understatement). Having two brothers in college right now and getting ready to go to college next year myself, an incident like this really scares me. The scariest part of it is that classes weren't canceled and the school wasn't evacuated . I hope they figure out who the culprit was soon.

[Black Sparrow]

Honestly, walking into a school with any weapon intending to harm others is a cowardly act.

QFT.

[VileTerror]

What's with all the school shootings? Can't we ever have a shooting somewhere that's actually a little more deserving? I know there are a lot of bad students out there, but they're hardly the <i>source</i> of their weakness.

Just ain't proper thinking that gets someone to the point of killing at a place of learning.

[Yeahduff]

Not gonna fault Virginia Tech or the police just yet. There was no reason to believe the first shooting was the opening act of a massacre, and the police figured the guy had fled. And even had VT canceled classes, it'd been very difficult to notify even a small amount of the students. The full brunt of the blame goes to the poor crazy bastard that did this.

[Laemkral]

I find it rather distrubing that yesterday one of the briefings at my unit was on security and how open the facility was. That's one of the first things I tend to notice about places I go to when I first show up. How open and vulnerable are they?

College campuses are surprisingly easy to access because of their size and public nature. Getting into buildings isn't even all that hard. I know of doors and routes that remain open even late at night at my school, all of which are security/safety risks. The dorms themselves aren't that hard to get into during the day if you know what to do to get in, and then how to get past whoever's manning the front desk.

As for this shooter being able to be on campus 2 HOURS without any trouble is a serious failure. The police claimed that initially they thought it was a domestic disturbance and the shooter had fled campus. Domestic disturbance? Someone discharged a firearm on school property! That's a serious "Uh oh" if I ever heard of one. Every cop on campus with a radio should have been notified of this and given a description, then the area checked just in case he decided to return after leaving the scene.

This is a horrible tragedy, and there will most likely be a huge uproar in its wake with tons of interest groups championing issues and claiming to have a quick fix. We've had the sadness, let's prep for the stupidity that follows. By the by, anniversary of Columbine is 4 days away.

[Kris X]

What shocks me is all the stuff they put on the news about it.

Gawd, special thoughts to the victims and their families. Also to those who have to stay on campus after all this... Fear can drive you sick.

[McDuffies]

I've heard about this in news. Terrible.
Makes me wonder when will they actually start taking actions to prevent such things. There seems to be a lot of tension in USA that just knocks less stabile people over the edge, and so far everything that's been done related to these events just seems to raise the tension.

[Zhongda]

If you look around, you will find links to the Facebook/Xanga/LJ of the shooter... and you don't know whether to remain sad for the tragic loss of life that has occurred... or disgusted at the bloodfest this maniac could have created, because he had so much access to a lot of automatic weapons.

[VileTerror]

Not fair <i><b>at all!</b></i>
You've stolen my spotlight.

[Dutch!]

I'm surprised it took so long for this to be posted here in the first place. We heard about it here in Australia about two hours before the thread was posted (about 6:30am here) and they'd already revised the count several times by that point.

Anyway... to me the point is that it's not a tragedy 32 people died. It's a tragedy one person died.

Even worse... you still can't seem to beat our world record worst civilian massacre, no matter how hard you seem to try.

Add to that, I hope nobody ever does.