One Last Comment on Random Violence

Eric,
Don’t know if I’m opening a can of worms best left firmly sealed, but I would like to hear your viewpoint on the Second Amendment questions swirling around this incident (again).
Charles

I’ll add my two sense… As a Virginian who (like you) is devastated by recent events, I still wholeheartedly support the right to bear arms… HOWEVER, I do think that the ability to walk into a gun store (in any state) and then immediately walk out the same day with a weapon is obviously a VERY POOR SYSTEM.

The answer (IMO) is the institution of a nationwide program that is far more thorough in the process of validating an individual’s competency and background. It may be an inconvenience to some, but I don’t think that most rational people would have a problem waiting a few days to pick up their purchase. (Although I don’t know how such a system would be developed.)

The risk is far too great not to re-evaluate the flaws in the current system and there has to be a logical compromise that would be acceptable to BOTH SIDES of the debate. So far, we have had two of the VT victims with ties to our area, and if making gun purchasers wait a few days will protect our kids from suffering their same fate, there is no counter-argument against a new system that could possibly be justified. After all, we’re talking about protecting children here.

Obviously there is no 100% fail-proof way to stop this kind of unpredictable insanity, but the heinous actions committed by a minority of sick-minded individuals should not result in the total loss of privileges for the thousands of law-abiding citizens who are guaranteed this freedom and exercise their rights responsibly.

My take on the whole gun debate is simply this… IF you take the guns off of the law-abiding citizens of this country, then the only people left holding guns are the government and the criminals – which (IMO) is far too often the “same” group.

And I agree with Steve’s points which are excellent. Not only should this tragedy force us to re-evaluate gun laws, it should also force an examination into dealing with the mentally ill before things reach this point. The background info that is coming out now on this psycho and the list of warning signs is absolutely shocking.

Kevin, I think that everyone here can agree that the term (as I used it) is being applied to the individual that committed this atrocity. If that isn’t the definition of a “psycho”, then I don’t know what one is.

Folks here’s what I can’t get over. First, Cho is the FIFTH murderer to legally buy a weapon at that shop in Roanoke. How do you keep selling powerful firearms–I’m not talking hunting rifles here–after you hear about murderer #3 or #4 using a weapon you sold? Is there no moral responsibility? Don’t you get a little more careful? Not without state intervention, I suspect, and let’s face it, Virginia makes a ton of money selling guns to people in the northeast who can’t get them legally there. Our gun laws are a black mark on the commonwealth.

Second, I find absolutely ludicrous this notion that more armed students would have made the situation better. I failed another student today for plagiarism, and I assure you, I’m glad he wasn’t packing a Glock with those clips like Cho’s that the Republican Congress just made legal again last year.

I seem to have shifted from Denial to Anger; no criticism of anyone here is intended.

Ken Noe
Virginia Tech ’81

Guys, no matter what happens, I think we have to admit that if someone wants to do something like this, no amount of gun control or psychological profiling or increased surveillance on campus is going to stop it. One of the sad realities of living in the world is that tragedies like this will happen because of how some people choose to deal with (or not deal with) their problems. I wish there was something magical we could do to realize who is just odd and who is a sociopath, but until they pull the gun from their pocket and start firing, we will never know. Scary, I know, but sadly I think its realistic.

Best (especially to those in mourning)
Rob

Ken,

Your points are all valid, and will throw in this tidbit. Recently the NYPD collected 83 guns in a crackdown, and guess where they all came from…Virginia. I, like you am amazed to see some talking head saying students should be allowed to be armed on Campus. Yeah, there’s a fine solution.

What’s harder for me to understand, especially watching the videos he sent to NBC just how noone at the school had any clue about how disturbed he really was. That stuff is unbelieveable to watch, and you can see this was no random act.

Regards from the Garden State,

Steve Basic

Several thoughts:

1) I don’t know if VA is a concealed carry state, but I am glad that no student was carrying. The worst nightmare any cop can imagine is to run onto a crime scene where many people are waving guns and shooting: who are the criminals and who are the brave citizens?

2) Preventing such actions means infringing some right, somewhere. Do we deny liberty to troubled people in case they snap? Where is the line between “acceptable” anti-social behavior (sullen, surly, keeps to himself) and unacceptable? Waiting until a crime is committed is not exactly the answer – by then he’s already killing.

So which is the greater infringement? Denying liberty via involuntary commitment, say, in a mental health facility for “odd” behavior, or denying someone his 2nd Amendment rights?

Personally, I am fine with gun ownership – provided we can devise a rigorous standard of licencing and registration. No gun show loopholes, no private sale loopholes, etc. If you buy a gun, you are responsible for it’s subsequent history. We can facilitate private sales via gun stores who can provide the necessary background checks, for example: If your prospective buyer fails that check and you sell it to him anyway, or if you skip that part, and the gun is later used in a crime, you must bear some responsiblity for transferring the weapon.

Another aspect to this is how quickly some folks want to exorcise the culture of violent themes. Is Hollywood to blame? Rap? PC Games? Possibly. I am not willing to say that a culture immersed in violent revenge fantasies is not somehow also a little bit culpable when those fantasies play out.

That said, I think that Free Speech is also a right, and question whether it should be infringed. In fact, I think Free Speech is a necessary component of our system, and we should be really careful about monkeying with it.

So it boils down to which right do we infringe in trying to prevent future killings?

1) Life, Liberty, Pursuit of happiness?

2) Free Speech?

3) Gun ownership?

It is clear that none of these things can be entirely unfettered in a society. But which do we fetter most?

Me, I vote for gun ownership. That would seem to have the least collateral damage.

Dave Powell

As I understand it, and I may be very wrong about this, the shooter wasn’t eligible to buy a weapon by Virginia law due to his being ordered to have mental health treatment by the court a couple years ago.

We need to do a better job of enforcing the laws we have on the books.

As to campus security, that’s a tough nut to crack. A couple ideas–give some professors training and allow them to have a weapon in their offices; or, increase the size of the campus police and station an armed officer in an office in selected academic buildings with the responsibility to respond to all the buildings in their area. I’m sure there are much better ideas out there, but I’d like to explore them before we start taking rights away from everyone.

Regards,
Cash
Virginia Tech ’79

Two points:

My grandfather (who died when i was 3 – I am now 66) said that gun control was the worst possible thing for the people. He pointed out the high death rate in New York City for crimes with guns and noted the New York had (even at that time) the Sullivan Law which was one of the most stringent gun control laws on the books in the 1940s. He said that the criminals could ALWAYS get guns no matter how they were ‘outlawed’.

The people who would be affected by ‘gun control’ are the very people who would not commit a crime using a gun although admittedly people are killed accidentally by guns. But then, when I used to grow roses, there was a big stink over a well known horticulturist who died after drinking a big slug of Orthene insecticide which he had stupidly put in an iced tea glass! There was talk at that time about outlawing Orthene, but there is no legislative cure for stupidity!

Secondly, at one time, I had two relatives who were in the New York State mental health system. Both were unable to live unsupervised lives, my uncle because of a brain injury which made him incompetent and my grandmother who had what we now understand as a degenerative disease of the brain. At that time, New York State had one of the best – if not THE best – mental healthcare program in the nation. Then along came the ‘civil liberties’ folks who carried on about the poor ‘inmates’ and their lack of freedom – that was about the time that drugs were being produced that allowed some mentally ill people to live fairly normal lives IF THEY TOOK THEIR MEDICATION! The then Governor Rockefeller – seeing a way to save money – took up the cudgels for these ‘poor folks’ and their ‘rights’ and closed the great hospitals which had cared for my uncle and grandmother. Fortunately, we found another facility for my grandmother where she stayed until she died, but we never learned what happened to my uncle. Probably he was ‘released’ to die in the streets somewhere without a place to sleep, a hot meal or even a cigarette. So much for ‘rights’!

Now New York has no better ‘mental health facilities’ than any other state and many is the ‘homeless person’ who really belongs in custodial care rather than sleeping in a box in some alley or pushing some poor college student in front of a train because the voices told him to do it!