The Shrine

http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.vt.edu/
http://cyanne.livejournal.com/294476.html

Whoa. Looks like they reacted well, its a shame there isnt really anything people can do to prevent this stuff.

Flip wrote:Whoa. Looks like they reacted well, its a shame there isnt really anything people can do to prevent this stuff.

Other than parent or be a real friend, I agree there's nothing else you can do

Apparently they haven't even caught the second gunman yet. Hate to say it, but it could get worse...

EDIT: My mistake. I guess the second shooter search is just a cautionary thing?

EDIT: my mistake, too, i thought they reacted well because when i read it they reported 1 dead... now its 21...

22 eh? Yeah that's a new record.

All you need is psychotic motivation to pull stuff like this off.

In alot of cases I heard those kids lose heart halfway through their rampage. Guys like this or of course the 2 in the original Columbine shootings just have more drive. In other words they need to be taken down or run out of targets alot faster.

Dunno if you guys remember, but I'm at Tech now. I'm not on main campus, though, CS moved out to the Corporate Research Center this year. But a friend of mine was in lock down two buildings away from where the 10 am shooting took place. She saw them take people away in stretchers, and saw them apprehend someone, who I think I've seen in pictures. Another friend of mine can't get in contact with her friend who was in the building where the second shootings took place.

Goddamn, now it's 32.

I too have a friend who goes to Vtech, luckily he lives off campus.

32 dead, 2nd shooter killed himself, was wearing body armor, and had 2 semi-automatic pistols...

Motive isn't clear yet, as best as anyone can tell it started out with girl problems (first shooting was on the 4th floor of a dorm, a girl's floor) then he might have just decided to take as many as he could afterwards.

No word yet if he was a student or not.

Asked why the campus, which has more than 26,000 students, was not shut down after the first shooting, Flinchum responded that police determined "it was an isolated event to that building and the decision was made not to cancel classes at that time."

Steger added, "We had some reason to believe the shooter had left campus."



I think they should have cancelled classes until further notice. They don't even know who is dead yet.

That's the question everyone is asking. We didn't get the email about the first shootings until 9:20. A friend of mine was two buildings away from Norris (where most of the 32 were killed) and heard shots.

Blacksburg is a strange place to be right now.

In response to Tessian, he had no body armor; he had a vest with clips. And it wasn't a spur of the moment thing. He shot around 60 people in total. That's five clips right there. Factor in all of the shots that missed, and he probably had around eight clips. He reportedly chained some of the doors of Norris Hall. This was planned.

Far out, I was wondering why VT sounded familiar to me.

Really sorry about this for you, Scott, and I'm glad you're okay.

2nd shooter? I thought there was only one.

When I heard the story I thought, Kupek goes there! Then I thought, no he went somewhere else for grad school. But I guess you transferred back.

Anyway, needless to say hearing this on the news seems surreal. One gunman was able to murder 32 people (and injure another 20-30)? Unbelievable. Being there has to be like living in a bad dream.

Kupek wrote:In response to Tessian, he had no body armor; he had a vest with clips. And it wasn't a spur of the moment thing. He shot around 60 people in total. That's five clips right there. Factor in all of the shots that missed, and he probably had around eight clips. He reportedly chained some of the doors of Norris Hall. This was planned.

Yeah that story didn't hold up at all...I hadn't heard that the vest was just a vest...earlier reports claimed it was a bulletproof vest.

But yeah, you don't bring 2 semi-auto pistols and half a dozen clips just to take out your ex...

CNN Headlines are absurd. "STUDENTS SLAUGHTERED!".

Oh brother...

Oh you missed the other 2 earlier

BLOODBATH MASSACURE

and another I forget...damnit

Kupek wrote:That's the question everyone is asking. We didn't get the email about the first shootings until 9:20. A friend of mine was two buildings away from Norris (where most of the 32 were killed) and heard shots.

Blacksburg is a strange place to be right now.

this still pisses me off as a guy who has been shot at by a nutjob student with a grudge...... Everytime I hear about stuff like this I get shitty flashbacks. There is no way I'm going to fall asleep tonight and probably will end up sleepless for days.....ANyone remember Thurston High School? Well the news sure as hell doesn't....It bugs the fucking hell out of me that columbine is brought up religiously but noone remembers the other large high school shootings. I'm literally trying to drink myself to sleep right now. If you want to have nightmares try to watch that manypeople get shot in front of your face...fuck dude......I know how strange things are...death fucking god this has literally driving me to a breakdown.......lllllllrelly ucks up the head when this happens and I keep getting pissed the more and more I see poeple talk about school shootings et none even care about the one that helped ruin my life is a deep as hell depression with weird dreams and shit that I still have to this day...I'm actually working on a comic now trying to get off the shit you gothrough.....fucking just hard to write been working on it for a year now and finally think I might have a finalized scripr....I'm gonan sotp eranting now and tru to pass out. doubt it's gonna happen

Pity but what we can't convince a few of these shooters to go shoot up the NRA offices where they keep throwing up opposition to legislation that would stop this shit...

Seems the shooter was a foreign national. I can't wait for the inevitable xenophobic backlash.

I feel like kicking a chair over or something. What the fuck was wrong with this kid?

Nev wrote:Pity but what we can't convince a few of these shooters to go shoot up the NRA offices where they keep throwing up opposition to legislation that would stop this shit...

Do you really think the kid wouldn't have been able to get his hands on a weapon if he wanted to? Sadly, I doubt stronger gun laws would have changed a thing. I wish it was so easy.

he was an alien with a green card, i dont think they sell to aliens. He got them off the black market, i'm sure, the same he would have done with tougher gun laws.

So, he was from C-ville, my town, and a victim was, too. Erin Peterson. I think she is the younger sister to someone i went to Centreville High with.

I have a radical idea. How about we don't use a recent tragedy to make political statements. I realize both sides honestly feel their position would have helped prevent what happened, but that doesn't matter now. At some point we will have to take this incident into account when we make policy, but we can't do that now. We're too close to it. We have to wait until we're able to discuss it rationally, divorced from the emotion.

When is that? I don't know, but it's certainly not the same day where I break down crying because I drove by West AJ.

Fine, my mistake. And I'm sure he got it off the black market as well.

I retract my statement.

It's not like this guy had an assault rifle or anything fancy to do this. I doubt tighter gun control would have mattered.

As far as locking down the school goes, I believe they say they got 26K people on the VT campus and the campus spans 5 square miles. I think that's the size of a small city there (certainly has the population of one). You can't just lock down everything something that big whenever someone gets shot. Society can't function if you've to stop whatever you're doing in the nearest 2 mile or so radius anytime someone gets shot.

HERES JACK!!!!!

http://www.n4g.com/gaming/News-35467.aspx

fucking Jack Thompson

Wacko Jacko's comments are quite ridiculous sounding. With this logic you could argue that violent videogames = good students, since a lot of good students play those games too =P

Though people who are obsessed with guns tend to be drawn towards gun related games.

I don't think there's any relation, I mean, I love GTA Vice City but you won't even see me killing a fly =)

If they want to figure out the reason why children are killing, they should examine cultures where this sort of thing doesn't occur, and see what elements are common between the two, and which are different. I am very willing to bet that violent games are a common element..... Though truthfully, how many people in Japan play first person shooters? Though the GTA series has quite a bit of popularity over there (GTA San Andreas and GTA 3 sold 400,000 copies a piece, and Vice City 500,000); of course, I don't think the Japanese play first person shooters. They also have very strict anti-gun laws there. Though family honour and such might be factors to examine as well.

One wonders if, at some point, mistaking correlation for causality will cease to be a valid bigot's argument tactic.

Can't somebody just do a PSA real quick and explain to everyone that just because two pieces of data are correlated, it doesn't necessarily imply a causative relationship?

At this point, I think blaming Jack Thompson for what he says is like blaming a retarded kid for not being able to do algebra. He's just incapable of not doing it. The networks, however, don't need to give him an outlet.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.nbc/

So he sent a video explaining himself.....kinda....Psychotic nut.

Kupek wrote: When is that? I don't know, but it's certainly not the same day where I break down crying because I drove by West AJ.

Oh, you knew some of the victims?

No, luckily no one I know was hurt. But I'm just upset. I can't explain exactly why. I know a bunch of people who should have been in or around Norris at that time, but weren't for a variety of reasons. A good friend of mine was two buildings away and heard some of the shots. Another good friend of mine would have been in that French class if she could have afforded tuition this semester, knew several people killed, including the professor; her mother is a professor and teaches in that classroom the next period. She watched it unfold from her sixth floor office in McBryde. Another friend would have been walking by Norris at that time, but didn't because her building, Torgersen, was one of the buildings that had a bomb threat on Friday, and she didn't want to go there first thing on Monday. Her niece was stuck, alone, in Torgersen during the shootings. Her brother-in-law is an engineering professor and knew one of the professors killed. A guy I train with just skipped his class in Norris.

Everyone else can just turn off the news, but it's constant around here. Norris Hall is less than a <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&s ... om=1">mile and a half from where I live</a>. It's tiring dealing with it all the time, but I also don't want to leave.

Chris, I - and I suspect everyone else - haven't said anything because we don't have the words. I don't know what to say to that.

This does hit closer to home to some people then even, 9/11. I understand...

Kupek wrote:At this point, I think blaming Jack Thompson for what he says is like blaming a retarded kid for not being able to do algebra. He's just incapable of not doing it. The networks, however, don't need to give him an outlet.

QFT

Kupek wrote:Chris, I - and I suspect everyone else - haven't said anything because we don't have the words. I don't know what to say to that.

I think that's kinda the response around the country right now. These killings seem more senseless than most...

Nev wrote:

Kupek wrote:At this point, I think blaming Jack Thompson for what he says is like blaming a retarded kid for not being able to do algebra. He's just incapable of not doing it. The networks, however, don't need to give him an outlet.

QFT

But they always will in order to ensure they are "fair and balanced"