University of Phoenix is looking better all the time.

First reports of one dead, several wounded were awful enough. Then they hit with "17 being treated" and I was able to poohpooh with oh, those are probably cases of hysterics, asthma attacks, twisted ankles from running away, maybe some broken bones from jumping out windows. People do panic in such situations after all.

Then the "20 dead, 20 wounded...." comes out and, holy christ, I just can't think about this. Limp attempts at humor amount to distancing from the reality. (It actually took me a good 20 minutes before the though occurred that certain people *coughAbuAlGcough* have to be at least slightly relieved that their upcoming testimony is not going to be the lead story on any media outlet anywhere tonight.)

And not only is it snowing on this mountainy campus but the medevac helicopters are grounded because of wind.

Goddess guard them all...and lead those who have gone on to the Summerlands.

This event is now being described as the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. Even John McCain might not feel safe walking on that campus.

No answer will be completely sufficient. I can only think of Vonngegut right now: so it goes.

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are already mentioned a failed 'right to carry on campus' law last year, as if being armed would've spared these victims. i won't link to such filth.

america learns on this day a little bit about what it is like to live in iraq. i doubt most will reflect on this, though.

VA Tech is a "gun-free zone". How is it possible that someone had a gun there?

as if being armed would’ve spared these victims.
It very well could have. One person with a gun could have shot the gunman, reducing the carnage hugely. Why is that so hard to understand?

america learns on this day a little bit about what it is like to live in iraq.
Perhaps we should set a timeline to withdraw from VA Tech. I'm sure that would ensure that something like this would never happen again.

.....""The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said"

No matter what the tragedy, this freak always has to send a message to his base that says "Hey, don't worry about me! I'm one of you!" He could have simply expressed condolences to the families of the slain (even though we know the sociopath in chief is incapable of feeling grief) and assured those families that all the available law enforcement resources would be employed to find out what happened. He could have said that, but of course he didn't. No, George couldn't resist giving the finger to grieving families while sucking up to the guntoting neanderthals which comprise his "base" by stating, first and foremost, that he believes in the Second Amendment. "All laws must be followed" - Well yeah, obviously, George. But what happens when they're not?? That's when a leader needs to step in and show the people that their govenment will find out what happened and prevent any such loss of life ever again. My god! This "man" is fucking less than useless!!

I just hope this doesn't lead to more Gun Control.

Official Wingnut Troll Form #37128312-A. I haven't seen that one in weeks! Brings me back...

But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!

Is this really the goddamn time to point out some pro-gun trope as if abstractions mean a fucking thing when the morgues and hospitals near Virginia Tech are filling up? If you're pro-owning-any-kind-of-semi-and-fully-automatic-gun-is-our-right kind of human, by all means revel in your freedom. Maybe Colt will start producing semi-automatic nuclear bombs designed for soccer moms...

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Clearly, you have no clue what a "semi-automatic" gun is. At this point, pretty much any gun on the market right now is semi-automatic.

Nudie, do you ever hear of this type of thing happening in countries with strict gun-control laws? When is the last time someone in England shot up scores of students?

Gun control laws must apply to the WHOLE COUNTRY. Local gun control (like in DC or the VA Tech Campus) is useless if any deranged/convicted criminal can legally purchase multiple firearms in the next county/state.

The idea that these things could be stopped if everyone walked around with shoulder holsters only makes sense in Right Wing Fantasy Land.

Unless you believe proven liar John Lott's "research".

The problem with all this gun violence doesn't seem to be gun ownership per se, as Canadians have a much higher per capita gun ownership but far lower incidence of gun violence. Arguing Second Amendment versus strict gun control appears to miss the point. I have no guess as to what the problem actually is. I can only weep at the senseless loss.

Xan, I have children myself. You can't keep them locked up at home forever, sooner or later you have to let them fly and hope/pray for the best.

PS: Don't expect anything more than base-pandering from GW for the rest of his life, he has nothing left to turn to.

Actually, the gun crime in England is as high as it is in the United States. And they have banned all handguns. How is that possible? And non-gun crimes are higher than in the United States.

"In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent."

And then there is this from a year ago: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/a...

And I have no problem with gun control laws. As a gun owner, I believe that there has to be very strict licensing and good background checks. Anyone who wants a gun should have to go through a certain amount of training before being able to purchase a gun.

At the same time, I believe that it is a fundaental right to own a gun, assuming you can pass the licensing and background checks.

to post a link to what you're quoting?

The link you did post cites an increase in "gun offences" which I guess could include posession of an illegal firearm.

Now check out this link. If I'm reading the bottom section correctly it shows a TOTAL of 50 (thats five-zero) gun homicides in 2006/07 in all of England and Wales.

Somebody just killed more than half of that today, by themselves. USA! USA! USA!

Yes, clearly, I don't know much about guns. All I know is what I read in the Coroner's report.

What I do know is that when I spy a reflexively pro-gun response to a tragedy, the facts of which are not nearly all in, I smell a hyper-reactive agenda at play. The bodies of the dead are still warm, the wounded are many, families feeling shock and despair and grief and panic--is this really the time for Limbaughesque Nation to trumpet pro-gun propaganda? Could you wait, say, another five or ten minutes before releasing the safety on your core pro-millions-of-guns-in-the-hands-of-all-god-fearing-Americans convictions? Try this: look down at your hands--imagine them cupping the head of your beloved as blood pours out of his or her bullet wounds...a short inhale and your beloved is no more. Now look up and there, above you, leaning down, is someone with a pamphlet telling you how great gun ownership is. I am not a pro-gun person, but I also realize it would be impossible in this country to take away guns from everyone. I am in favor of discontuing the sale and production of the more vicious varieties. What do guns do for us besides make manufacturers of those guns very, very wealthy?

Every day in Iraq we use our guns and every day people die, but nothing else changes. Guns kill, but they do not a civil world make.

So, no, clearly I don't know guns. I only know the post-mortems.

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When the bulk of the shooting went on.

The first call came into 911 at about 7:00 AM; the police arrived fifteen minutes later. The first victim was shot in a dorm; the police's preliminary investigation indicated that it was a contained event - and that the shooter had probably left the campus. That is what accounts for the two hour time lapse between that first event and the rest.

The University President and police chief are explaining why they didn't lock down the campus or cancel classes, etc. Because since the majority of students live off-campus and given the assumption that the first shooting was a discreet event based on a personal motive harbored against the first victim, it was believed that the better security arrangement was to keep everybody calm by going ahead with the day's events.

The point of all this is that police were on the campus, fully armed, able to communicate with one another, and they were unable to stop this guy until he killed himself.

There is something truly disgusting about the rightwing hurry to suggest that somehow all these deaths and injuries and all the heartache that is only just beginning is happening because the people who choose to go to Virgnia Tech and the people who run it were too lame to arm themselves and fight back. I'm sure we will hear plenty in the coming days about people attempting to defend themselves and helping one another.

Most of the rightwing fantasies about this assume a single armed student coming to the rescue - if lots of students carried concealed weapons, when they pulled them out, how would they know who the shooter might be? I stand confirmed in my belief that much of rightwing thinking is based on an appalling lack of imagination.

BTW, while the rightwing bloggers are busy noting the gun-free zone in which this school is located, they are excoriating the few liberal commentators who have mentioned gun control. Here's my personal favorite: From Macsmind, and whata mind it isn't:

32 Dead, and 17 wounded. Hot Air with a huge round up to include the predictable MSM take on “gun control”. Left wing blogs are already talking that note. Yeah, like magazines load themselves, and rifles point themselves. Once again you can look to the left to make a political point out of someone else’s pain.

Perhaps they should have allowed students to be able to defend themselves.

(my emphasis) Plus he links to Michelle Malkin whose title for her first post on the news is this:

Carnage at Virginia Tech;
Readers point to campus ban on self-defense
By Michelle Malkin · April 16, 2007 01:52 PM

And that is exactly what her post is about, and all that it is about. But of course that couldn't be construed as making "a political point of of someone else's pain."

"Maybe Colt will come up with a semi-automatic nuclear bomb," is a level of brilliance, Nudie, you will never understand, let alone achieve.

a nut with a gun. I'm for gun control but you'll never stop somebody from getting a gun and using it, unfortunately.

What I love about the logical fallacy in Insty and Nudnik and all these folks' arguments is that research demonstrates that you're much more likely to shoot your spouse, your kids, your brother or your parents than an armed criminal or, for that matter, a deranged gunman. The foolishness of having someone else firing a weapon in such situation is beyond ludicrous.

unless the 2nd amd gets changed, there will always be gun-happy zones of this country, which as shy correctly points out, makes the whole country, laws or no, a gun zone. canadians have guns like we do but not the killing, that's the best place to look for what we can learn. the real issues have to do with why people kill each other, and what drives them to do so. it's a cultural problem. yes, that discussion that no one wants to have.

a culture that literally worships violence. that's what we are. this is the price we pay. we're not the only country to celebrate violence in our culture, but we're one of the few that pretends like this isn't so. having conversations about ownership that will never be resolved misses the point. i'd add that the same culture of violence that produces mass killers is the very same as the one that allowed 80% of the population to believe that the 'right' answer to a non-existent threat was illegal war.

One person with a gun could have shot the gunman, reducing the carnage hugely.

There may well be a grain of truth in that sentiment, but it is one that humanity must have the will to resist. If Nudnik is correct, then civilization is over, everything we have been taught about ourselves from sociology class to the Holy Bible is one big lie, and humans are no more than stupid animals forever incapable of escaping the law of the jungle.

Homosapien has been given the gifts of intellect and reason, and I long for the day that we finally take full advantage of those gifts.

...for the rest of us

For the love of all that's holy.

Go back and watch Shane. There is no better explanation.
A gun is every bit as dangerous and every bit as vicious and every bit as likely to kill people all by itself as a car is.

Maybe a little less, because very seldom are whole families wiped out in gun wrecks.

Rotten people come with the rest of us, and some rotten people pick up guns, march purposefully through doors they chain shut behind them, and slaughter everybody in sight. They've upped the efficiency of this lately, but it's still one (or two) rotten people.

Other rotten people get themselves elected, and pick up armies, and massacre nations wholesale. This usually takes a village to achieve, and wipes out, proportionately, a lot more innocent (more or less) victims.

The people killed in West Virginia today were going about their lives, pretty much in peace. They didn't expect to be shot down in their classrooms or dormitories. They didn't expect to spend the day transported to the front lines of one angry man's private war.

Unfortunately, that's where they found themselves.

I Guess I Should Be Thankful we're being treated to the same old anti-gun sermonizing and pro-gun sermonizing, rather than have nudnik or some other "conservative" twist this into a "she shouldn't've broken up with him, then he wouldn't've shot all those people" festival.

But it seems that this part of April, this week-around-the-middle, when the grass turns green and the tulips bloom and the skies fair off ... brings out the worst in people.

Or else it's some karmic thing about the planets' alignment, because probably the Texas City explosions in 1947 really were an accident. Those were 60 years ago today.

Fifteen years ago this week, Vernon Howells' religious compound's barracks went up in flames.

A dozen years ago this week, the Murrah Building blew up.

Eight years ago this week, two teenage boys destroyed their school in Columbine.

For the sake of all those folks' resting in peace, think of their survivors; think of their families; and have the common decency not to dance on their graves in the throes of a pro-gun/anti-gun frenzy.
Just until the funerals are over, eh?

"We are killers. But today, we choose not to kill." Capt. James Kirk

but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance."

- Marcel Proust

-Homer

...and have the common decency not to dance on their graves in the throes of a pro-gun/anti-gun frenzy.

Please show examples of this "dancing on their graves in the throes of a pro-gun/anti-gun frenzy." WTF?

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