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

[Yeahduff]

The NRA does have it right - guns don't kill people; people kill people. If this guy didn't have access to guns, he may very well have found something else to kill with. Mustard gas isn't that hard to make; chlorine gas is a snap. Chain the building's doors and light it on fire. Go on a driving rampage. Make your own flamethrower. Or, just get a gun illegally.

Gun control won't stop this particular kind of violence.

It can't be ignored that guns almost always are involved. They just make it easier and more accessible.

Not that I'm advocating a gun ban, just that these are the consequences of the 2nd amendment.

[Black Sparrow]

I have no idea if this is related or not, but I suspect it is: a bomb threat that has shut down a quarter of my campus. The newscasters say that someone probably is just taking advantage of the VT situation to get classes canceled. All I know is that they blocked off a major campus road, and that makes navigation annoying as heck.

[The Neko]

What's starting to bother me is that they brought up that the shooter was an English major and he wrote two violent scripts for his class (http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/ ... uis-plays/).

This bother me because, being an English major, I've been in a creative writing class before and saw violence from being burned alive to chucking a frozen Pepsi can at someone's head. The point is, violence is very common in the workshops, but that doesn't mean any of the writers would go on a shooting spree. If anything, it's more safe to write it out anyway. I'm even guilty of writing violent things, but I'm a pacifist.

What really worries me as an after effect, is that next time any creative writing majors write a gruesome or violent text, that they'll get arrested or catageorized as a possible future murderer. It's like when the Columbine kids wore trenchcoats. Slowly but surely I fear that America will begin to censor students creativity in a over-dramatic way.

I feel for the victims, but also I worry for the future innocent or misguided victims to follow from this event as well.

I think the difference is the nature of the violence and the preoccupation the student had with it. It was a recurring theme in his work, which indicated to the teacher that he had a fixation. It was also combined with other signs of erratic behavior and mental illness.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

It was only a matter of time before fake bomb threats occurred. There will be lots more for a while.

The reports of who this kid was are creepy. He never said a word and was generally mysterious. People in his classes knew his as "the question mark kid" since that's what he wrote down on the name sheet the prof passed around. Neighbors said he never responded when greeted. He also stalked people, took pictures of other students in class under his desk and set fire to a dorm room. One prof described interactions with him was like "talking to a hole."

And if you look at his picture, he just looks like a "normal" person.

[TRI]

What was weird to me was--after hearing his teacher say how she'd talked to counselors and police about him, and hearing his classmate say he'd always thought seemed like the archetypal school shooter--seeing the interview with his former roommate who, apparently, never suspected the guy could be violent.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

It seems the profs and students had more interactions than the roommate did. All the roommate seems to know about him is that he never talked or responded, never showed emotion, and spent time writing on his computer. I doubt the roommate knew of the violent stories and the question mark thing, which are only things people in the same class would've known about. One of my friends had a roommate that barely spoke and never really knew anything about too. Too many college students, a roommate is just someone that sleeps in the same room with you.

Come to think of it, I shared a house with someone that rarely spoke as well, and I don't know much about him.

[Nanda]

Not surprisingly, I agree with yeahduff.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Apparently, Cho sent a package to NBC between the 2 shootings.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/

[Grabmygoblin]

all guns make me uncomfortable, though I grew up around them. people where I grew up use guns as tools, hunting for deer population control and supplies, they eat the venison, tan the hides for leather, etc etc etc.

but I get nervous when I even see cops with them, maybe because I understand the specific purpose they are for.

if everyone started carrying concealed weapons, more accidental deaths are going to happen, not to mention all the people who get drunk or stupid and get in fights are likely to kill instead of just spending the night in the drunk pen.

yeah, guns don't kill people and all that, and a crazy determined to kill people could come after us with a chainsaw instead if guns were better controlled, but they would have way more trouble killing people. chainsaws are to make cutting easier, guns are to make killing easier.

personally, I and most others I suspect would kill themselves before others making their own mustard gas.

The Simpsons did a good episode on guns. I wanted to find the clip where Homer is showing off the "alternative" uses for guns, but couldn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE25Brsf94E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em027Z8_LG8

[MixedMyth]

Yeah. I'm okay with hunting. Here in the midwest deer overpopulation can be a problem as there aren't many big preadators left to take care of them...although that's changing. Apparently some pumas have been found in Iowa now. And I can understand having guns around in dangerous areas, like in Tel's example. But for Joe Shmoe to have a pistol in his suburban house? I'm not about that. But even THAT aside, the idea of having students carry guns around them....you could not pay me enough to teach a class where students could do that. And as a student, I would NEVER go to a class where that's a policy.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I have no problem with hunting rifles either. I'm actually a decent shot. Like many others though, I have issues with everyone carrying concealed weapons. We may not get as many mass shootings, but people would get shot all the time.

The guy on MSNBC just asked if Cho played the video game Counter-Strike, and the former suitemate responded, "No. He just wrote on his computer all the time. Sometimes he watched game shows and wrestling on tv." They're trying to play the blame game already.

On a lighter note, I was just thinking about that Simpson's episode today.

[Mr.Bob]

Gameshows make me violent.

[MixedMyth]

Gameshows make me violent.

It's that damn Jeopardy. Vanna White and her subliminal messages!

[MixedMyth]

Doublepost, I know.....but wow. What an asshat. This guy needed serious mental help and a padded room.

[Garasade]

I think all personal defense devices should develop into more non-lethal means. Like tasers that have more range or experimental sonic based devices.

After watching the videos I get the intimidation the guy was very angry, and needed some serious mental help. No he wasn't crazy, but he was just very messed up in the head and his outlook on the world. These kinds of thoughts to seem to permeate those who are isolated and often lonely. Hindsight is 20/20 after the fact and the fascination with the killer should not lessen our regard for the deposed and celebration of their lives in the least bit, but I cannot help feeling that society has indeed not been able to help this man, even though it tried. Many people say the plays and other hate riddled writings were his 'cries for help', but in my mind it was just another attempt for him to spurn those who tried to help him and allow him to build further delusive justifications, in the context of his outcast status, to increase his wrath, which was unequivocally self-inflicted and in a positive feedback loop. This guy seems to have been a narcissist in the highest order, that his paltry delusions became a platform through which he defined himself and others around him. This type of mental lapse is very acute threat that many people, including me, have struggled with. He could perhaps have been saved from himself, but that would have required unnecessary medical attention and group based communal care, something that no one would have been willing to bestow upon the 'weirdo'.

This is just my assessment.

[TRI]

This guy needed serious mental help and a padded room.

Apparently a judge agreed. If I've got the facts right he was deemed a danger to himself by a court magistrate in 2005 and ordered to attend counseling, but never went.

I really wonder what made this guy so screwed up.
Armchair psychology here, but has anyone else noticed the number of times sexual assault comes up in his writings and videos?

[MixedMyth]

Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be some event that caused him to be this way. It could be chemical/hormonal imbalances, genetically linked, any number of things. He does seem to fixate on that and women as well as sexual abuse alot...but I suppose if you're that batshit, you tend to fixate on something?

I wonder what his parents are going through.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I heard they are in hiding essentially. The address was posted on the Fox News website at some point for some reason.

[MixedMyth]

Wow. That's reeeeeeeeeeally shady of Fox News to do that.

[TRI]

Haven't they (edit: news in general, not FOX specifically) also showed pictures of their neighborhood?

Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be some event that caused him to be this way. It could be chemical/hormonal imbalances, genetically linked, any number of things.

True. It could be a complete coincidence or something he focused on for totally unrelated reasons. I've heard it's not uncommon for people with some mental disorders to fixate on sexual imagery, and combined with his apparent violent fixations . . . could just have evolved that way.

But it's enough to make me wonder what the rest of this guy's life was like.