Shooting at Virginia Tech

[lrb111]

Ph,
I agree. I was talking to a friend in florida who is a transplant from good ole New York :)

And i asked her if she thought if a teacher were carrying a firearm if they could have stopped the shooter.

She said, " i dont think its a good idea for teachers to carry guns". I said, "thats not what i asked. Do you think if a teacher had a gun he/she could have stopped that guy?"

She said "yeah, yeah i think they could of"

Some times people realize that legall having a gun on you isnt all that bad.

I hope she understood.

I've seen the news channels, etc. I keep waithing for just on reporter to ask one of the survivors.
"If you had had a gun, would you, or could you have used it to stop this carnage?"

not yet...

[Wildscar]

Ph,
I agree. I was talking to a friend in florida who is a transplant from good ole New York :)

And i asked her if she thought if a teacher were carrying a firearm if they could have stopped the shooter.

She said, " i dont think its a good idea for teachers to carry guns". I said, "thats not what i asked. Do you think if a teacher had a gun he/she could have stopped that guy?"

She said "yeah, yeah i think they could of"

Some times people realize that legall having a gun on you isnt all that bad.

I hope she understood.

I've seen the news channels, etc. I keep waithing for just on reporter to ask one of the survivors.
"If you had had a gun, would you, or could you have used it to stop this carnage?"

not yet...

The sad part is you probably never will.

[Venus Pax]

A few of my students asked me today, "Miss, what do we do if somebody comes to the school and starts shooting people?" (I got similar questions from students after 9/11.)

I looked at them and told them to fight with everything in them. I reminded them that I will not condone them fighting one another on campus, but that if an attacker enters the school and is threatening their lives, then I want them to fight.

One boy asked, "Well what do we use, a desk? Do I throw a desk at him?"

I told him to throw everything they had at the person to subdue him. (I say him, since I'm not familiar with any female school shooters. When we ladies get upset about something, we prefer to eat a half gallon of Blue Bell.)

We discussed 9/11, and how Flight 93 passengers responded when they found out the intentions of the hijackers. My students seemed relieved to have my blessing on their innate reflex to fight back when attacked.

[ScubaSigGuy]

This is an excerpt from an email a friend sent me. He was not sure who the author was.

Now to be fair I have been to Israel and they have the CCW issue down. I am not aware of anywhere that you cannot carry if licensed. Everywhere I went I was asked if I had a gun. The security folks want to know who has them but that's it. It stays concealed. This IMHO is a viable solution.


In the last two years especially, street terrorist attacks in Israel have repeatedly been shortstopped by armed Israeli citizens. A terrorist opens fire at a crowded bus stop; a passing Israeli motorist draws his 9mm pistol and cuts him down. A late-arriving security man with an M-16 hoses the twitching terrorist just to make sure.

The 1911 .45 automatic remains the quintessential American combat handgun. This one is the excellent, affordable Kimber Custom II.

Another terrorist attempts to trigger an explosive device in a public place. An Israeli housewife draws her pistol and shoots him dead before he can detonate the bomb. The would-be martyr dies alone.

A third terrorist opens fire with an automatic weapon in an Israeli school. What could have been a mass murder on the scale of Columbine or greater is limited to a very short casualty list when Israeli parents and grandparents, who have provided volunteer armed security after receiving state training, open fire and kill him with their concealed pistols.

Note that in each of these episodes, it was an armed citizen who stopped the terror. Not a soldier. Not a security guard. Not a police officer. Just as wolves do not try to seize a lamb under the nose of the sheepdog, terrorists do not strike where armed protectors are known to be present. They scout the turf and select their victims more carefully than that.

Israel began the program of armed citizen guards in the schools after the Maalot massacre in the 1970s, when a large number of children were slain in a terrorist incident. The volunteer parents work in plain clothes, armed with concealed semi-automatic pistols, and are trained by Israel's home guard. It is significant that in the more than a quarter century between Maalot and the incident mentioned above when the citizen guards shot down the terrorist in the school in 2002, not a single child was murdered in an Israeli school!

The reason is that Israel wisely publicized the fact that the civilian volunteer guards, indistinguishable from the regular teaching and administrative staff, would be in place. It served as a tremendously effective deterrent. No Moslem fanatic who wants to go to Allah as a successful warrior who has slain many infidels visualizes himself making the trip after having been shot down by some geriatric with a gun before completing his mission. Any head trip as arrogant as that of a self-styled martyr cannot tolerate the thought of an ignominious death at the hands of an ordinary victim. It would be like a wolf picturing its own throat being torn out by a sheep: simply unthinkable, and therefore a natural deterrent.

[ScubaSigGuy]

A few of my students asked me today, "Miss, what do we do if somebody comes to the school and starts shooting people?" (I got similar questions from students after 9/11.)

I looked at them and told them to fight with everything in them. I reminded them that I will not condone them fighting one another on campus, but that if an attacker enters the school and is threatening their lives, then I want them to fight.

One boy asked, "Well what do we use, a desk? Do I throw a desk at him?"

I told him to throw everything they had at the person to subdue him. (I say him, since I'm not familiar with any female school shooters. When we ladies get upset about something, we prefer to eat a half gallon of Blue Bell.)

We discussed 9/11, and how Flight 93 passengers responded when they found out the intentions of the hijackers. My students seemed relieved to have my blessing on their innate reflex to fight back when attacked.

Venus,

I sure don't envy you having to answer those questions. Good job with your students, I only wish every teacher thought like you do and wasn't afraid to say it. What grade do you teach?

[piro]

This might be a direction for another topic and if anyone thinks it'd be better I'll take your advice but what do you think should be done about being in this situation where you are locked up in a building and you are allowed to carry. And as it turns out you had to confront the BG or you were in a room with other people and by peeking out the door and seeing the guy down the hall had a chance to give cover fire so that people could run out to a nearby exit behind you. Say everyone gets through and you are running out after them here's the question:

What do you do next so you don't get shot by LEO? I was sitting in class trying to figure that out. Seems like removing the clip and taking the round in the chamber (shouldn't have any rounds left if you were cover firing though) and leave the gun inside? Or would it be better to holster it back and conceal it and as you get outside get on the floor on your stomach with your hands out behind your head and have a cop find it when they search you all the while explaining your status and what just happened?

[piro]

A few of my students asked me today...

Edit: nevermind my question as asked by Scuba

[NcongruNt]

Hot off the BBC internet press: Students say they wish they could have had a gun to defend themselves. Someone finally printed it. dismissed it as reactionary, but it's still there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6566763.stm

Washington diary: Virginia shootings
By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

America has witnessed at least 19 fatal school shootings in the last decade.

Norris Hall
Police say the university's size made it difficult to "lock down"
What is it that makes men, and in some cases boys get up in the morning, slaughter innocent civilians in a place of learning and then end their own lives?

The question pursued us on our way to Virginia Tech. Outside Washington the headquarters of the NRA - the National Rifle Association - glints at passing cars.

The lights were on in many of the offices. Was this usual? Or were they busy working on damage control for the inevitable criticism?

Another 100 miles further down the Interstate you enter the Bible Belt. Periodically giant illuminated crucifixes jostle for attention with huge billboards advertising injury lawyers and fast-food outlets. Just before the city of Roanake there is a Wal-Mart. "Guns for sale all year round", it boasts, "except on Xmas Day".

'Aftermath'

We were in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains only a few miles from the West Virginia border. It was bitterly cold. The expectant dishes of a phalanx of satellite trucks pointed silently at the stars. The stage was set for the pageantry of grief and healing that follows every tragedy of this kind.

Cho Seung-Hui
One teacher described Cho Seung-Hui as a deeply disturbed individual
The aftermath of every school shooting may have produced its own ritual, but every tragedy is different and full of baffling details. In Pennsylvania last October, when a milkman killed five girls execution style in a village school the Amish world of horse drawn buggies, straw hats and militant pacifism collided with modern gun violence, visited upon innocent children by a friendly neighbour.

In Virginia Tech, an institution devoted to learning and clarity of thought was brutalised by the murky mind of a painfully shy Asian American. As he rampaged from the Maths class to the Engineering Class, from German to French he may have felt like Rambo but he still looked like the quintessential science geek.

The stereotype doesn't fit. And as we discovered nor does the location. The campus of Virginia Tech sprawls across the rolling landscape. It is huge. The university has 100 buildings. It boasts its own airport and power station. Size is one of the reasons why the police say that they couldn't easily "lock down" a virtual city that is home to almost 26,000 students.

But the place is also surprisingly beautiful. The college buildings are tastefully built in beige quarried rock. The fluorescent green lawns are meticulously manicured.

A lot of money has clearly been well spent. A golf course snakes between half a dozen artificial lakes and the students we spoke to were impeccably polite, despite our intrusions into their grief. In short, Virginia Tech is the kind of university you would want to send your daughter or son to.

Right to bear arms

On the sports field between the hall of residence where Cho Seung-Hui shot his first two victims and the Norris Hall where he gunned down the remaining 30, I spotted Chris Mucklow, a 22-year-old sociology student who loved soccer.

Glock
Some of the killings were carried out using a 9mm Glock
He was sitting by himself and crying silently. I asked him, whether he thought there should be stricter laws against gun ownership. "More background checks, absolutely," he replied. "But I wish I had had a gun that day. I wish some of the professors had had guns on them. They could have taken the shooter down."

It was an opinion I heard from many students at Virginia Tech and it goes beyond the abstract debate about the "right to bear arms", enshrined in the Constitution. It is about self defence in the face of a rampaging menace.

If Professor Liviu Librescu, the 76-year-old Holocaust survivor who died wedging himself against the door to stop the gunman from killing his students, had had a weapon, perhaps he would he alive today.

But it strikes me that this is a reaction rather than a solution. "You can't control guns with more guns for chrissake". That's how Brendan Quirk, an engineering student who watched as the victims jumped from the second story windows of Norris Hall put it.

If the state of Virginia had been obliged to conduct a thorough background check and seek references before granting Cho the right to bear arms, they might have discovered what his teacher Lucinda Roy knew from his writings: that he was a deeply disturbed individual who fantasised in his creative writing exercises about shooting people in the face - first one eye, then the other.

Debate

Would John Markell, the owner of the Roanoke firearms shop really have wanted to sell Cho the 9mm Glock if he had read some of these pages? After all four guns sold from his shop had already been reportedly involved in other homicides.

George Bush watches Laura Bush sign a memorial
Mr Bush said it was impossible to make sense of such violence
Yes, this tragedy has sparked a debate about gun control but mostly outside America. Even Australian Prime Minister John Howard, that stalwart friend of George W Bush, was quick to blame "the US gun culture".

But on Capitol Hill, the Democrats, who have sunk their teeth into every other aspect of the administration, have remained largely silent on the issue. Gun control puts voters off in swing states, their research has discovered. Best to say little about it especially with an election approaching.

Remember Howard Dean, the country doctor turned governor, turned Presidential candidate, turned Chairman of the Democratic Party? He railed against George W Bush "shooting from the hip" but he never really spoke out for gun control. Why? Because his liberal home state of Vermont hates fast-food as much as it likes hunting.

Despite this week's bloodbath there will be no overwhelming demand for gun control in this country. Like evangelical Christianity, baseball and a love of Pumpkin Pie it is just one of those things that separates Europeans from Americans.

Will the next shooting take place at another university, a high school, a nursery or a secretarial college?

In our hotel they were handing out ribbons made by the staff, displaying the colours of Virginia Tech. Orange and red. It was a touching gesture. On campus thousands of students gathered with candles in hand to commemorate the dead.

Earlier in the day they had sat in silence in the football stadium to listen to President Bush explain that the victims found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. America is at its most impressive when it grieves and remembers. But will the soul-searching ever produce legislation and will it make schools safer?

[Lodge2004]

It was an opinion I heard from many students at Virginia Tech and it goes beyond the abstract debate about the "right to bear arms", enshrined in the Constitution. It is about self defence in the face of a rampaging menace.

What is the "abstract debate" about the right to KEEP and bear arms? I always thought self defense was the whole point, whether it be against a bad guy or a bad government.

Would John Markell, the owner of the Roanoke firearms shop really have wanted to sell Cho the 9mm Glock if he had read some of these pages? After all four guns sold from his shop had already been reportedly involved in other homicides.

More support for keeping "trace" data out of the hands of the press and others seeking to use the date for other than its intended purpose.

Will the next shooting take place at another university, a high school, a nursery or a secretarial college?

Unfortunately, yes. They are the safest place for a criminal to commit these types of acts.

But will the soul-searching ever produce legislation and will it make schools safer?

It will definitely produce legislation but it is HIGHLY unlikely that it will make schools safer. Events such as this generally produce bad laws.

[stevie_d_64]

A few of my students asked me today, "Miss, what do we do if somebody comes to the school and starts shooting people?" (I got similar questions from students after 9/11.)

I looked at them and told them to fight with everything in them. I reminded them that I will not condone them fighting one another on campus, but that if an attacker enters the school and is threatening their lives, then I want them to fight.

One boy asked, "Well what do we use, a desk? Do I throw a desk at him?"

I told him to throw everything they had at the person to subdue him. (I say him, since I'm not familiar with any female school shooters. When we ladies get upset about something, we prefer to eat a half gallon of Blue Bell.)

We discussed 9/11, and how Flight 93 passengers responded when they found out the intentions of the hijackers. My students seemed relieved to have my blessing on their innate reflex to fight back when attacked.

Bravo Venus!!!

This is where it needs to start...

It is not a fatalistic stance to take in a situation like this...It certainly is a challenge, but if you get shot in the process, there is no guatrantee you are going to die...There is certainly a guarantee that you stand a good chance if you cower and assume a fetal position in the face of a deadly threat...

You must gauge your response to a situation based upon your own internal gut wrenching sensibilities...You're either going to die fighting, possibly, or die cowering, doing nothing...

It is a hard lesson to learn, you are either going to accept the reality or deny it...

Denying it has obviously not gotten us very far...Us meaning the gun-control crowd...

[NcongruNt]

What is the "abstract debate" about the right to KEEP and bear arms? I always thought self defense was the whole point, whether it be against a bad guy or a bad government.

Keeping in mind that this is a British reporter, they see it as abstract. I agree with you.

Will the next shooting take place at another university, a high school, a nursery or a secretarial college?

Unfortunately, yes. They are the safest place for a criminal to commit these types of acts.

But will the soul-searching ever produce legislation and will it make schools safer?

It will definitely produce legislation but it is HIGHLY unlikely that it will make schools safer. Events such as this generally produce bad laws.

I agree, unless the people of this country stand up and realize that taking away our guns only makes us easier victims for criminals.

[Venus Pax]

They are in grades 6-8.

[phddan]

I let my kids (! male, ! female) know at a young age that they need to protect themselves, their siblings, and innocents, and that I would deal with the heat if needed.
And I also let them know that if they started any trouble the authourities would be the least of thier troubles. Seems to of worked good. Now I'm working on my grandkids.
I would be first in line to volenteer to be a citizen guard at a school. I'm sure there are quite a few others who would be willing to volunteer once a month or so. I think its a great idea.

Dan

[stroo]

Last night I talked to two of my daughters about this. I strongly encouraged them that if they are ever in this kind of situation, they should fight with all their cunning, strength and will. Interestingly enough, they had been talking in school about this earlier in the day and had independently come to the same conclusion.

[Liberty]

I think its interesting that that some of the survivers did so, because they played dead. While Liviu Librescu gave his life so that several others could have an opportunity to escape.

A friend I served with once told me "there is a time to fight, a time to retreat, and a time to die." I figure we don't know what the time is until that time is upon us.

Profesor Libresco won't be forgot, I've learned something from him and I pray if my courage is ever summoned I will be able to perform as well as he.