Come on guys, you are monday QBing here. The police thought the first shooting was a domestic violence case. They thought it was an isolated incident involving an angry boyfriend or something along those lines. They believed he fled the scene and went off campus. They had no reason to believe he was still on school grounds.
no i understand that completely. but the fact is, people were murdered on campus and no one knew where the killer was. they cannot simply assume he fled because he was not waiting for them to show up at the scene.
typically whenever a violent crime occurs anywhere near a school (more so elementary-high school, but still), the school is locked down and/or the students are sent home.
this incident seems to have been taken more lightly than a bomb threat.
i wonder of the new security measures that would be put into place throughout universities after this.
i'd hate to say it, but as i've walked around my own campus, i just cant help but notice how vulnerable it would be to any kind of attack. although we do have our own police officers and vehicles constantly patrolling, all it takes is one maniac with an explosive to bring mass devastation to any university.
in high school, we would have random checks of our personal items and lockers in order to keep us under control. i think we would at least need some metal detectors now...
oh, and another thing, what the hell were the school officials thinking in sending out an email to WARN students about a shooting. AN EMAIL?!?!?!? i never check my emails in the morning, i dont know anyone who does. that is inconceivable in my mind. what's worse, the emails were sent out 2 hours AFTER the dorm shootings...
oh, and another thing, what the hell were the school officials thinking in sending out an email to WARN students about a shooting. AN EMAIL?!?!?!? i never check my emails in the morning, i dont know anyone who does. that is inconceivable in my mind. what's worse, the emails were sent out 2 hours AFTER the dorm shootings...
okay, my friend goes to V Tech. Here is some information he gathered, and information about the shooting in general.
A. The shooting in the dorm was at a time that the bulk of students have classes, or are in the cafeterias, or in the library. students are everywhere BUT the dorms. So, to say it was irresponsible on V Techs part is frivilous. Noone knew about the shooting immediately. Now, had there been more students in the dorm, say 5ish, then it would have been different, the gunment would have been stopped.
B. Because of the amount of buildings at V Tech, people starting panicking AFTER realizing what occured. That was when the police starting rushing in and securing buildings.
C. Because of V TEchs size, all the police and law enforcement couldnt really contain 25,000 + on campus. All the state law enforcment, local, and campus security awould only equal 1/5 of the students.
D. He believes it that the motive behind it had to deal with a particular group of students, teacher, or the like. He said that if the gunment truely wanted to go on a rampage and kill himself, he could have gone to the libraries, any cafateria, or a lecture hall. There had to be reasoning he went to that particular room.
eh hopefully more detials to come
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no i understand that completely. but the fact is, people were murdered on campus and no one knew where the killer was. they cannot simply assume he fled because he was not waiting for them to show up at the scene.
typically whenever a violent crime occurs anywhere near a school (more so elementary-high school, but still), the school is locked down and/or the students are sent home.
this incident seems to have been taken more lightly than a bomb threat.
Exactly right 750. Our point 14cent is that the authorities should not have simply assumed. There was no one in custody and they had no idea who they were looking for. How can you simply assume that it was domestic violence and the gunman has fled?? You can't. Until someone is in custody or they know for a fact that the gunman fled, they had to assume he was still in the area and still a danger, not vice versa. I really think that the authorities are going to have to answer some tough questions here. The way I see it, the massacre of 30+ people in that engineering building might have been avoided. We will never know but the way things were handled left a lot to be desired.
I've been watching this all night, it really bums me out to see this.. I can't believe someone could do that.. I feel bad when I run over a rabbit or a dog or somehing.. Kinda hard to believe someone could look these college kids in the face and shoot at them.. Most of these people are around my age.. so thats even harder to believe.. What a coward.. RIP guys/girls of VT
Exactly right 750. Our point 14cent is that the authorities should not have simply assumed. There was no one in custody and they had no idea who they were looking for. How can you simply assume that it was domestic violence and the gunman has fled?? You can't. Until someone is in custody or they know for a fact that the gunman fled, they had to assume he was still in the area and still a danger, not vice versa. I really think that the authorities are going to have to answer some tough questions here. The way I see it, the massacre of 30+ people in that engineering building might have been avoided. We will never know but the way things were handled left a lot to be desired.
I understand what you guys are saying too but you are looking at it in hindsight. You keep referring to him as a "gunman" but the police didn't know that he was a "gunman" yet. The case at the time was a domestic violence case. This guy walked into a specific room in a dorm and shot at his gf or ex-gf, whatever it was. He had an intended target and left afterwards. They had no reason to believe that this guy was a "gunman" that was going to go on a killing spree.
If you think that the school should have been on lock down, why stop there? Would you feel the same way if he had walked over to an office building in the area instead of a school building and killed everyone there? Would you be pissed that the police didn't lock down every building in the neighborhood?
first of all, this is easily one of the saddest things to happen to this country, and i'm deeply sorry and saddened by what happened. as everyone else has said, i will be praying for the victimized students' and faculty members' families, friends, and anyone else who knew them. life isn't fair, it's often short, and it's ups, and downs, lefts, and rights rarely make sense. this easily takes the cake. the only justice for something like this is hell, and this guy deserves it.
i watched a lot of this last night, and i just got through reading the thread, and i'm with 514. UT has 52K+ students on its campus daily, and it would be damn near impossible to put it on "lockdown." universities, like vtech that are large, open, campuses really can't be locked down very quickly because of their size and how open they are. also, if you consider the first shootings as an isolated incident, the cops did what any cops would do...seal off the scene, locate witnesses, and start to put together what happened. sadly, people get shot all the time in this country, and i've yet to see any police agency come up with something like, "we have two people shot. seal off the neighborhood." i would imagine that people who commit unthinkable crimes, if not killed by suicide, generally spend some time "running" before they get caught, i and i seriously doubt many of them have been caught by sealing off whole sections of a town. VTech's 2600 acres is too much space in too little time. this guy knew that. it's rumored that he's the one who called in the bomb threats last week to test the response time of the authorities. i guess his tests were accurate. nevertheless, i really don't think there's anything more the cops could have done.
as for the email, i've thought about this one for a while, and i really see no other way this could have been done. when i was in school, i didn't check mine every morning, but what else does one check or listen to in the morning when in college that would have warned them of this? i lived off campus throughout college, so i drove to school everyday. i hate the radio, so i'm always listening to cds in my car. how would someone like me find out? there's no way the university could have warned me, and there's no fault on either side for them not being able to. chances are, though, that i would have skipped class and stayed home to play ssx or halo and get throwed with my roomates(we did this a lot). i really wish more of them did the same yesterday.
one of the other things i immediately thought about was the gun control debate and ironically enough, phelan. what now man? you'll probably be surprised that i'm on your side on this one. gun control and laws like it, only generally serve to limit the abilities and rights of people who obey the law. criminals don't care in the first place, so why would taking a gun off of a list that they don't care about do anything to stop things like this? the killer's guns were very common handguns that can be found, at least in TX, in just about any sporting goods store that's worth a damn for as little as a few hundred dollars. the crazy thing is is that my first thoughts after i heard about this was that "i need one." there's nothing that stops someone from robbing your house like seeing some light reflect off of the side of a handgun or the barrel of a shotgun. i bet this guy would have punked out real quick if he had one pointed at his head. the flipside of this is the number of people who would be walking the streets armed on a regular basis.
lastly, i believe i read someone's post about shooter games on this guy's 360. i wonder how far this argument will go in the media. i've never thought that kids' violent actions were a product of video games. hell, this guy was, legally, an adult. i do understand, however, how someone who's mind is aready warped, could treat the games as more of a real life thing more than a game on his or her television set. when you turn on some of the newest racing games, there are immediate warnings about driving on the street as you do on the game and the inherent danger involved in it. the "don't try this at home" saying has been around for years. 99% of the people who hear it don't even pay attention to it 'cause 99% of people don't drive like one does in a video game, they don't walk around with automatic assault rifles clearing terrorists from casinos like in Rainbow Six, and they can't do wrestling moves like they're in the WWE. getting rid of games isn't the problem...shitty parenting and chemical imbalances in the few that do this stuff are the majority of the problem's cause.
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p.s. this happened at UT as well. an ex-marine named charles whitman made it to the top of our tower/main building, and proceeded to shoot people with a rifle from there. since the area directly below and around the tower is concrete and has many statues on it, one can still see the bullet holes he left behind in the ground, statues, and walls. i believe the only way to get up there now is through a tour...
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i bet most of you have never heard of this, but check this out. i mentioned it in my last post at the end. this is the story of the guy who did something like this at TX. imagine someone shooting down at a campus of people from the vantage point of a 300+ foot tower with rifle. now that they're very well-trained to shoot it. read this. "96 minutes of unimpeded shooting." yep...96 min. rifle. UNIMPEDED. there was no rainbow 6 then. games aren't the answer. i don't know what is, but they aren't.
I truly believe that the anti gun crowd will use this as a rallying cry that ALL guns should be banned; which as any logical person will realize will not help any at all since as you pointed out criminals don't give a damn about whether a gun is illegal or legal to own.
As a nation we've been babied and nannied to the point that there is near 0 personal responsibility for anything. The gun didn't kill these people, the gun maker didn't kill these people, nor did the ammo makers or the video game makers. 1 man did, and the responsibility is his.
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