VA Tech

[RubHer Yellow Ducky]

Originally Posted by MarineHawk

So am I. I didn't realize that no more discussion was allowed by anyone on how to deter this type of event.

If you don't want to read, don't click.

SORRY, wasn't trying to come on like a censor...

Network TV is just showing too much of it.
your right, I won't click this thread anymore

[MarineHawk]

Originally Posted by RubHer Yellow Ducky

SORRY, wasn't trying to come on like a censor...

Network TV is just showing too much of it.
your right, I won't click this thread anymore

I was probably beating a dead horse. I haven't seen much of the TV coverage. About all I watch anymore are things like Rome, Deadwood, Sopranos, Military Channel, History Channel, etc ...

I guess I am wasting this reply since you're not looking. If you're there RYD, have a good evening.

[Huck BB62]

Originally Posted by MarineHawk

Ann Coulter responded better than me:

That's very well said, and I can't say I disagree.

I guess my concern comes from the disconnect link in their instacheck system. In my opinion, the mental institutions and courts should be on that database. When a nutjob is well documentented as this sackof**** was, his name should've been flagged, period. If we're going to be able to keep our guns, we need to be able to weed out these people. They're krappin' in the punchbowl. Gun registration is here to stay, it should be worth something more than a revenue generator and a way to hassle the law abiding gun owners. Since we have to do it, let's use it to our advantage and weed out the kooks and criminals and lend legitimacy to our cause. After thousands and thousands of gun laws haven't prevented this kind of thing from happening, perhaps there IS a solution already at hand and we aren't utilizing it? It's all very reminiscent of the 911 attack. People knew, it still happened. As in the 911 attack, the flight instructor schools copped out to "We did nothing against the law, neither did they", the shop that sold sackof**** the guns is saying basically the same thing.

Yeah, technically, nobody did anything wrong, but added up, it sure did add up to a whole hell of a lot of wrong.

Common sense. We're sorely lacking.

[MarineHawk]

Originally Posted by Huck BB62

That's very well said, and I can't say I disagree.

I guess my concern comes from the disconnect link in their instacheck system. In my opinion, the mental institutions and courts should be on that database. When a nutjob is well documentented as this sackof**** was, his name should've been flagged, period. If we're going to be able to keep our guns, we need to be able to weed out these people. They're krappin' in the punchbowl. Gun registration is here to stay, it should be worth something more than a revenue generator and a way to hassle the law abiding gun owners. Since we have to do it, let's use it to our advantage and weed out the kooks and criminals and lend legitimacy to our cause. After thousands and thousands of gun laws haven't prevented this kind of thing from happening, perhaps there IS a solution already at hand and we aren't utilizing it? It's all very reminiscent of the 911 attack. People knew, it still happened. As in the 911 attack, the flight instructor schools copped out to "We did nothing against the law, neither did they", the shop that sold sackof**** the guns is saying basically the same thing.

Yeah, technically, nobody did anything wrong, but added up, it sure did add up to a whole hell of a lot of wrong.

Common sense. We're sorely lacking.

I wish we could distinguish the truly dangerous types of nuts in advance from the non-dangerous ones, but I'm skeptical. Preventing 9-11 would probably be a lot easier because you had a number of people communicating and planning a group terrorist attack. The VT gunner was a nut, but he was a loner and probably didn't tell anyone he was going to commit mass murder. He just never talked to anybody. He wrote crazy stuff, but there's a lot of that going around. Major mass shootings here have been occuring every eight years in the U.S. I can't see people allowing the state or federal governments to round up the hundreds of thousand of wierdos in this 300,000,000-person country to prevent a mass shooting every eight years or so.

For example I heard Sean Hannity on the XM radio repeatedly express outrage that no one took serious action against the VT gunner, even though he weirdly didn't respond in the dorm to routine hello-type greetings. He just weirdly looked away. It's wierd I know, but a partner in my law firm does the same thing. I can't see them descending on his home, taking his computer, and seriously investigating him on that basis.

It would be open to serious abuse. According to our Surgeon General: "According to current epidemiological estimates, at least one in five people has a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year (i.e., 1-year prevalence)." http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/librar...r2/sec2_1.html

Are we going to have our government and gun stores identify and investigate 60,000,000 mentally ill people (30M/5) to prevent the next mass shooting? Even if appropriate, I don't think it's possible. We live in a free society. We enjoy great benefits from that. We also face some greater dangers.

Germany has the most absolute form of gun control, and that didn't prevent the Erfurt Massacre--a school shooting there in 2002 involving 16 fatalities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_massacre

[Huck BB62]

So we have ourselves a dilemma. We have on the one hand a segment of the society that wants no controls on anything morally, thereby establishing a morally bankrupt society. Products of this society are becoming more commonplace and commit atrocities like this guy did. Now it looks like we get to pay for it twice. We get to live in an ever increasingly morally disfuctional society with all of the costs that this incurs (again, check out the evening news, collegehumor.com, youtube, hell, the entire internet, hell, watch CSPAN!) and we get to lose our rights because their "freedom" is fuggin' up our society?

What a mess.

I do believe we're on the same page here, we've seen the enemy, and it is us.

[GLBLWARMR]

Interesting read:

Signs of Intelligence?

By Fred Thompson

One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now
is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again,
could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without
being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by
the university itself.

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal
permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit
in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk,
joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms
- and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit,
Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are
difficult or impossible to obtain.

The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second
Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence
of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated
criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they
decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.

Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that
people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us,
as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon.
Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to
expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.

In recent years, however, armed Americans - not on-duty police officers -
have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence
from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious
terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence
from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime
rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.

So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed
carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed
background checks and taken training classes. The university, however,
lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the
legislature for blocking the measure.

The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a
basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist
only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for
protection.

Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line
against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we
are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled "shoe
bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck
driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least
a half million crimes annually.

When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied
the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless
examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor
Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his
students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism
ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense
ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their
decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses
- and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of
a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always
wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean
much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

- Fred Thompson is an actor and former United States senator from Tennessee.

C ABC