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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"There was no reason to think that the shooter is then going to go on a random shooting spree."
Well.....
On a hot August day in 1966, a 25-year-old engineering student and ex-Marine named Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower of the University of Texas at Austin's Main Building and began firing. He killed 14 people -- he had killed his wife and mother earlier -- and wounded 31 in what, until yesterday, was the nation's worst shooting rampage on a campus.
1999: The suspect in shootings that left 12 people dead in two Atlanta office buildings and in an apartment south of Atlanta killed himself after being pulled over by police in Acworth, Georgia, 30 miles north of Atlanta, officials say.....Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell said authorities believe the shootings in Stockbridge preceded the shootings in Atlanta and may have taken place several days ago. He said the slayings are believed to be linked and that the victims may be Barton's wife and children.
BATON ROUGE, La. — A woman fatally shot by her husband after authorities said he killed four of her relatives at a church service had gotten a temporary restraining order against him last year.Erica Bell, 24, filed her request in December 2005, citing family violence, The Advocate reported. The restraining order was dismissed the following month at her request, according to court records cited by the newspaper.
Those are just a sample. I think you'll find that murder sprees inspired by domestic "disputes" are actually more common than campus shootings.
Damn,
They waited over TWO HOURS before the Market Place and Baghdad University exploded.
No SCUDS in Virginia, but King George and Laura express their sympathy.
It's a good thing that Terry McVeigh, fought them overe there.
Shucks and awe darn, my mind has become numb 2,748 DEAD for US and 650000 DEAD for them and King George gives his concerns?
...is that it is unpredictable when facing the future, but has a clear logical history when facing the past.
I have read a variety of letters claiming that we cannot judge the VT police for not warning students, locking down campus, or attempting to evacuate students because VT's a big place, the cops had no reason to suspect that their perpetrator was a danger, etc. But let's consider:
1. Someone who has killed more than one person has already diplayed a propensity to kill in general. This means that such a person represents a general danger.
2. Not having secured the suspect, the police were certainly to blame for assuming that he had fled the campus. People don't generally hide in places they're not familiar with, and a student from another country would have been most familar with his school's campus.
3. Failing to inform the remainder of campus of the incident -- and that a suspect remained at large -- is reprehensible, period. Because with either of those pieces of information, in the absence of any other action, the students and faculty would have been in a better position to protect themselves. Note that the shooter poked his head into the German class multiple times before he shot and imagine how different that situation might have been if class didn't meet that day, or if the students knew that a suspect matching his description was at their door.
Finally, I work at a university which is a bit bigger than VT. We have university-wide listservs, we have representatives who are contacted by telephone, and we have the usual public service announcements via radio. We invoke these resources to deal with tornados, floods, hurricanes, bomb threats, and snow. In fact, I was evacuated from my office two years ago on minutes of notice for a storm. It's not impossible. Furthermore, these types of events are rare -- but failing to respond to them aggressively can have dire consequences. Is it too much to ask that a university take all the steps that it can to ensure the safety of those who are there?
Next time when I have an emergency I will know what to do. I will send an email to 911.
There is no need of choppers with megaphones over the campus telling the students what is going on. Keep it mum. Why bother ? The best choice is to send e-mails.
Is this some MODERN kind of f***ing denial?
I'm really disappointed at the comments left on Wilson's Livejournal by a couple of people recently. These commenters are almost definitely Salon readers. That young woman's LJ is not a sounding board for ideological rants! Keep it to here, people.
In the Salon article (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/03/09/suicide/index.html), the question addressed was "Should colleges dismiss students who have attempted suicide in order to avoid parental lawsuits?" after a student's parents sued a school where their daughter set fire to herself in her room.
Looks like there will be another reason for colleges to give second thought to students who show evidence of mental health issues. Whether or not the student shooter at VT had a documented history of mental health issues such as depression or not, schools are now going to add "possibility student could become campus mass murderer" to the list of why students with mental health issues should be dismissed from the pressures of university. Because I'm sure there are scores of people lining up to sue VT right now. In addition to the school having to deal with the horror of the shootings, it's going to have to deal with people who want monetary recompense. Lots of it.
26,000 days is nearly the average lifetime. If the school took the day off it would be the equivalent of killing somebody.
But why can't you just inform students?
Well a number of people have suggested that they could have taken Shooter out had they the opportunity. The reality is the best thing was for people to stay in their dorm rooms while Shooter was in the building.
With all due respect to the victims and their loved ones, Mrs. America is rather prissy when it comes to "homeland" security. This was not a major event. This was a rather orthodox shooting by someone who was more than capable. Had he the desire and the opportunity to see his full potential, I am sure he could have achieved greatness on a much broader scale. Let us not forget how to ask the question "where do you keep the hand grenades?" like a freakin foreigner.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
