Topic: Not again; School Shooting at VT Tech

[Briareos]

Link

VT Tech had reports of a gunman on campus at 7:15AM this morning and the shooting apparently started at 9:45AM, did not initiate lockdown, cancel classes, or otherwise take appropriate defensive measures with any speed.  Reports presently are of two gunmen, and 32 dead.

VT Tech basically has a ban on firearms not being carried by police or security on campus, amazing how that is always the case in these incidents isn't it?  All it would have taken was one responsible CCW holder to put a stop to this.  For crying out loud, if you're going to make it so people cannot defend themselves, at least setup plans so security and the police can get quickly in place to minimalize the problem.

There was even a bill that go shut down that would have prevented this.  Just like New Orleans the local management utterly screwed over those they were responsible for, but we know who is going to get blamed here don't we?

Condolences to the families, although they are far from enough to make it right.

[Moshman^]

And I bet it's video games that made them do this too.

[Maki-chan]

Hmm, I doubt that any law other than the wholesale ban and confiscation of all firearms would have prevented this. After all VT did have a rule disallowing firearms on campus, so the shooter obviously had no regard for laws or rules. He would have obtained weapons any way that he could, and indeed he passed two background checks absolutely clean when he bought the weapons that were used to do this. That guy was seriously psychologically tweaked and there is no deterrent in madness.

[Briareos]

I haven’t come back to this thread in a while because of the emotional reaction the whole thing caused in me.

Honestly though it doesn’t really matter that much what weapon is involved as much as target willingness to fight back.  The Osaka School Massacre was committed by a Janitor with a Kitchen knife and the injured/dying count is competitive with the Columbine incident committed by two people.  People have been slaughtered with simple Machetes in Rwanda among other places, and 9/11 was committed by scum with box cutters.  If they can’t keep prisoners from bringing in drugs and making shivs, in a high security prison how can it work on the scale of an entire state where they can’t hope to duplicate anywhere near that level of control?  In some ways firearms are the worst tool for this kind of thing.  They aren’t discrete and as numerous criminal vs criminal, and criminal vs police incidents with entire magazine supplies being depleted at 21 feet or less without a single hit of even a bystander shows not exactly efficient in poorly trained hands.

If you really want to get right down to it even unarmed a group basically has to let one person kill them.  A person can cover 21 feet in less then 1.5 seconds, which is about the time it takes to draw, aim, and fire.  Aiming taking the most time.  As headshots are difficult to do in practice, let alone consistently the next best thing is nailing the heart.  It takes 10-15 seconds for a person to cease to be able to function from such a wound based on various studies including those of the FBI, which led to an old phrase about people getting their “ten.”  To be fair most people are a little too weak willed, unused to dealing with pain, and conditioned to the idea they’re supposed to just drop to expect them to just do this.  Those who are against private firearm ownership firearms tend to naturally be pro-victimhood as they go hand in hand.

Clausewitz has an interesting thing to say about peace.  Basically it amounts to if you want peace with a reasonable opponent you must make yourself appear capable enough that your opponent isn’t willing to pay the price he will have to pay to attack you and thus will bide his time while attempting to improve his odds.  Against the unreasonable that capability should be used.  Empty threats and false security are just bluffs waiting to be called.  To defend something make it so that it cannot be attacked, to insure it is attacked make it as enticing as possible.  Doing the latter in the belief it shall cause the former is as this incident showed, nuts.

[Maki-chan]

Meh, VT was yet another example of a society that puts no value on human life, neither the killer's nor that of his victims. Death is the ultimate, easiest, and most efficient solution, correct?

[Briareos]

I'm not sure about that.

It is true that there is a dominant culture that is in ascendance which puts very little value to no value on human life.  I personally believe this to be indivisible from the modern Left. 

Their answer to an aggressor (buglar/rapist/murderer) is that a plebian should simply be a good victim and give them what they want.  In effect putting the aggressor's life over the victims, and they've twisted and contorted the legal code to match as the various absurd cases of such people suing their victims for X, Y, or Z shows.  At least for the plebians, the elite naturally have armed guards. 

Their answer to an inconvenient human life (unwanted child/relative on life support) is to terminate it.  Their answer to environmental issues is that humanity and technology is the problem (despite more industrialized nations taking much, much better care of their resources then less developed one) and to put a human life below the value of an animal.  When something goes wrong it's somebody else's fault.  They are although Peck didn't mean them specifically when he titled his book such, the People of the Lie.

The opposing culture holds different values.  They may choose to arm themselves so that they are capable of preserving their life or anothers from great bodily harm.  Not just from human aggressors either, even in the city you have animals like large dogs that are serious threats to an adult let alone a child.  They tend to be self-sufficient, responsible for their own actions, and occasionally rather creative.  These same features however make it so they have less need for the government and for better or worse don't have the same vested interest in hanging off the politician's every word.  Rush Limbaugh once upon a time termed them the Silent Majority.


I'm not sure what you mean by death in that context.  To put a person down I assume, but I'm not sure.  Well to be blunt the human body is not designed so it can easily be shut down, less lethal (usually incorrectly referred to as less-then-lethal despite the fact they can also kill given the right circumstances) methods at this point in time are primarily meant to dissuade an attacker.  They cannot stop a determined person or one that is on enough drugs.  To stop such a person requires to cause massive system failure which is death.  Killing the person however is not the goal, the goal is to neutralize the threat and while sufficient force needs to be used to accomplish the task, excessive force is no looked on kindly by a jury.  As a matter of fact I know of at least one CCW program that teaches their students to immediately initiate medical care on the person they just shot after they're no longer a threat.  There is however a phrase that reflects the fact that they're not about to risk their lives to preserve that of an attacker:

"I'd rather be judged by twelve, then carried by six."

Ultimately if there was a better way of pulling the trick off the Police Officers would not be issued sidearms.

[Maki-chan]

Hmm, I guess that I meant death in the common sense view - when a person ceases to be a human being and becomes an inanimate object (cadaver). There was ample evidence from the VT shooter's writings that he was mad as a hatter so to speak, but either due to legal issues or just plain apathy, nothing was ever done to address this. No one ever put any value into helping this person or thought that doing so would benefit society in some way. So like is commonplace in America everyone who came in contact with him and who was in a position to do something about him chose the easy path and ignored the problem, hoping that it would disappear and go away. They ignored the ticking of the time bomb and allowed it to explode.

[Briareos]

Oh, you were referring to mental health things.    Yeah, that's something that has been allowed to slip way too much. 

When there's incidents where the mentally messed up have went utterly out of their way to try to get help with said services and end up killing someone because they just kept getting dumped on the street there's a very serious problem.  Personally I think the Asylums and Sanatoriums should have been maintained.  AIDS would basically be on its way out if the standard quarantine procedures and Sanatoriums were being used.  Maybe if anyone really managed to kill the Social Security hammock, instead of just temporarily stunting its rate of growth, and instead invested it, among other worthwhile ventures, in the afore mentioned institutions directly involved in maintaining public safety we could almost put an end to this.

The VT shooter actually got nailed by the mental health industry a few times prior to his rampage, and people on the ground did speak up.  The people in charge can be blamed for letting him go, although to say it was completely unintentional on their part wouldn't be quite true I think.  I shouldn't get into that though, and I've already said more then I probably should have.