That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard I'm not sure if I should even reply. If this guy was allowed to play dodgeball none of this would have happened? Genocides and mass murders don't just happen in sterilized school environments, lunatics aren't healed that easily.

Nats pay respects to Va. Tech victims
Washington dons Hokies hats in game against Braves
By Bill Ladson / MLB.com

WASHINGTON -- The Nationals paid their respects to the 32 people who were killed at Virginia Tech in an attack by an armed gunman Monday afternoon by wearing Hokies hats starting in the second inning of Tuesday's game against the Braves.

The idea came from a fan named Dave Lanham from Calvert County, Md. He e-mailed team president Stan Kasten in the middle of the afternoon. Kasten thought it was a great idea and ordered 40 hats. The hats arrived in the first inning.

The Nationals also had a moment of silence for the victims at Virginia Tech for the second straight day.

A few examples:

"Taking off her shoes she hits him hard"

How does one hit someone hard while you're taking off your shoes?

"He brushes Sue with his large arm and build"

And how do you brush someone with your large arm and build?

I skimmed the last few pages, and didn't see if this was posted, but, has the school said why they didn't shutdown or make an announcement, or at the very least warn the people on this campus?

I was talking about it with a friend at work today, and my Principal joined in the conversation totally on the school's side (understandbly I guess ). I know nothing about Virginia Tech. He kept saying that place is a "city" you can't close it down, they don't have P.A. systems and that it would be impossible. I don't know, I'd have gotten a bullhorn or something if I had to warn people. If even one person was saved because of it, it'd be worth it.

It's hard not to blame someone, and seemingly impossible to understand why this sort of thing happens. This guy had problems to be sure. I heard that his parents were caring loving people, and if that's the case, I can imagine how they are kicking themselves right now for not noticing he had problems and/or the extent of his problems.

Saladbar, I'm with you as far as losing a child. Under any circumstance the pain would be totally unbearable, but losing them in this way has another level of horror and pain.

TIS

And how many times are we going to read about Richard being called Dick. Gee, we've never heard THAT before!!

That just tells us that when push comes to shove people will come together and show support in a crisis.

The University seems to be a very caring and tight nit group for each other, even throughout this crisis.

What if social interaction only causes more grief to the depressed people? What if they don't want to fight, even if no one stops them? IMO, the loners and depressed people will be the last ones to enter into an argument or confrontation, let alone fight. And what makes you think all problems have easy solutions like going and beating up people? People who have never been in depression have no idea what it is like to interact in the society when the situation is hopeless. People in the middle of the social bell curve bounce back from tough situations, the deviants crumble, some only after they cause much damage.

I could imagine that it would be difficult, TIS. There are 26,000 students, many of them commuters, and there must be students walking all over the campus. However, in 2 hours, how could they not have done anything?? Maybe they don't have a PA system, but they don't have a security staff that has radios and could be dispatched to warn people. The police had been called to the first murder scene. Could they not DRIVE through the campus making an announcement. Do they not have gates at the entrances and exits? Gates that could have been closed to prevent anyone from entering or exiting?

I understand that there would have been major difficulties in locking down a place that large with such an enormous population, but I still have to believe that in two hours, they could have accomplished something.

Right on SB

I had to read the sentence again to spot the mistake, but on a casual reading, it did give me the idea of a woman taking off her shoes and hitting a man with the shoes .



I have no idea what he means here. I am not saying he is Shakespeare, but frankly it is not as bad as it was pointed out to be. In fact, I would challenge a lot of people to write 10 pages of play or movie script that is as readable as this. Not as easy as it appears.

This guy wasn't a serial killer. He was a mass murderer. Serial killers can be more readily profiled.

In both the cases, it is not possible to profile before hand to prevent the crime. It will be like in 'Minority Report' movie then. As Beth pointed out, not all lonely/depressed people commit crimes. Though there are correlations between a child abuse victim turning into a serial rapist, not all survivors end up as sex offenders. It is only in hind sight that we link the two. I think the mapping is one way primarily or at least that is the only thing allowed legally today. I will be very angry if I am forced to undergo some therapy to conform to social mean. Have you seen 'A Clockwork Orange'? I think that movie perfectly sums up what such a society could lead to.

Ditto! Just the thought alone gives me the chills.


As for what DMC said, I don't think that he meant it in the literal sense. I don't think that he was saying that because a kid is not allowed to play dodgeball per say, they turn out like this maniac did.

I believe that he was trying to bring out the point that in this day and age too many kids are coddled and overprotected. Seems that today many of the things that some of us older people partook in and were allowed to participate in as youngsters is now considered taboo. Many of the things that we participated in or did were normal things growing up. Now it seems that there is all this psyhcoanalysis going on about what is good or not good for young people to do. Too many restrictions have been placed on the younger generation of today. There is no question in my mind that the younger people today are under much more pressure than we were in our day. I believe that a lot of the restrictions and pressures that are put on the young people today is what drives some of them into self isolation. I think that all DMC was really trying to say was that society needs to lighten up on the young people of today and stop scrutinizing everything that they do and just let them be the people that they are supposed to be at their age.


Not making an excuse here for what this maricon did, but just speaking in general terms as to what I believe DMC was trying to say.

So, when ever there is a murder anywhere, why not shut down whatever place in which it takes place like a city, right? How about we shut down New York or Dallas, or Philly? Shut down for what? By the time they make the first announcement it's all over. VT is in a city. So, we shut down not only the campus, but the City also. That's ridiculous. What's the warning by the way? So the next day someone gets shot. "Hey, shutdown the campus again. A week from now another person is killed. "Shut 'ur down again." How about when a rape occurs - shut down the campus. Well, no. In that case no guys allowed outside. How about that? Gates? Gates? A university with gates? Like the University of Pittsburgh? Like UT? Like UCLA? Oh, wait. How about Columbia or Harvard? And, of course, we know that whenever you "close the gates" the killings stop. That'll do it for sure!

I think easy access to guns is one of the factors responsible for school killings. I agree with people who say that there is always a way to obtain guns illegally. But I am not referring to all killings in general, but specifically to school scenario. It is true that a professional thief/killer/gangster etc will somehow get a gun even if they are banned. But for an ordinary person, it will be very difficult. Getting a gun should be made highly difficult IMO.

That is what I meant DC, thank you. I didn't realize people responded to my post.

It was not meant in ANYWAY to defend what this sucmbag did, I think everyone knows me well enough to know that. The point I was saying is that, even if these cases are "isolated incidents", the fact is that people from my generation (which I believe is the last age group to not have these restrictions), had a higher percentage doing stupid things, but those things were no where near as bad as what the small percentage of what the kids today to.

I'd rather have 2-3 fights per day (like in the school I went to) then have one day of a mass murder. I don't think this was all taken into consideration with all of these "restrictions".

Olivant, with all due respect, I think that you are going a bit overboard with your analogies.

I understand your point about this campus being so large that it may have been impossible to shut it down or put it into lockdown. And that just might be the case.

However something should have been done by the authorities to prevent some of those deaths. I would like to know what genius in law enforcement assumed that the shooter had left the campus and was on his way to leaving the state? How in the world does a trained law enforcement official make an assumption like that without any hard facts to back up that assumption?

Yes it's very easy to sit on the outside looking in and then play monday morning quarterback. But put yourself in the position of some of these parents. There was over a two hour window between the first shootings and the second round of shootings. And as a parent I would damn well would want answers as to why such a gap existed between shootings without any real attempt to inform or protect the people of that campus.

Canceling classes might have been the smartest thing for them to do, half the school would have been off campus and the parts where there WERE students could have had policemen.

The profiling for serial killers is done after the fact. This term was coined by and FBI behavioralist, Robert Ressler, who wrote a fascinating book about 15 years ago, Whoever Fights Monsters. In several high publicity cases he was able to get inside the mind of the serial killer, and from the precise nature of the murder, the selection of the victim, the location and time of the incident, he was able to know things about the killer, such as what his apartment and car looked like, what type of work the killer did, level of education and/or race or ethnicity. He applied an approach of behavioral science to tracking these killers after murders are committed. These profiles are used every day in attempting to solve crimes that have been committed.

Certainly, there are many loners in this world and few erupt in such a fashion. But unlike the serial killer, the mass murderer tends to be as random as the victims he selects, like a tornado that sweeps through a town without warning.

It's very hard to "lockdown" a 2600 acre campus. But, there is no excuse for two hours to pass before sending out the first e-mail informing of the shooting that took place at 7:15am.

Not easy, that is true. I just expect more from an English Major and a good university. But, then again, he was an English Major at a technical university.

DC, the reason I said about canceling classes is because I know at my school at least, on days when classes are canceled there are only a hand full of places where 95% of the school population would be. Besides the dorm rooms, its the students centers (4) or 3 other buildings. There might be other students "wandering" but this guy wanted to kill as many people as possible. For my school it would take 45-50 officers (with local/state/college cops wouldn't be hard) to have some system in place for the places where all of the kids are. By having classes open you gave this guy x amount of places with 50+ kids in it, if you canceled classes he would have probably had 5-6 tops, but those would have had cops there.

With all due respect, how would anyone know there was going to be a 2 minute window, a 2 hour window, a 2 day window, or no window? It doesn't matter what anyone's relationship is to anyone else. There was nothing to be done unless one wants to "shut down" whenever something happens. Where do you draw the line? How long for the shutdown? An hour, a day, a week?

2 hours? George Bush waited 7 minutes to do something on 9/11!!!! This is clearly a vast, right-wing conspiracy to make South Korea look bad, fooling stupid Americans into thinking it was a North Korean who perpetrated this act, and then we can war with them with the neocons in control! Save our civil liberties! Impeach Bush!

[/retard]

Exactly. How do you know for sure if the guy left the campus or not at that point? The guy had not been apprehended yet, and there was no way to know for sure if he had actually left the campus or not. Every decision that was made early in the morning was based on assumptions. Poor judgement. Absence of malice, yes, but very poor decisions were made.

It's not very hard to lockdown a 2600 acre campus. It is impossible. It is difficult enough to lockdown a few buildings, let alone an entire campus. However, I completely agree with DC that Va Tech and the police dropped the ball with its lax attitude in between the two sets of shootings.

My Va Tech friend said that the administration always try to do everything in its power to suppress bad news (big or small), which is not altogether surprising. But this line of thinking bit them in the ass in a terrible way.

Do we really need this nonsense on a thread about a tragedy?

A truly awful thing

Did anyone see the video of his two roommates interview? There's a link on CNN's website.

Click on video "killer's former roomates recall strange kid".

http://www.cnn.com/