Nightmare unfolds at Virginia Tech

April 16, 2007

An unbelievable tragedy.

At least 29 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass shooting in American history — and the death toll may rise. At least 17 injured students were admitted to local hospitals.

Police at Virginia Tech, in Blaksburg, Va., said that the shootings happened at a dormitory and a classroom on opposite sides of the university campus. […]

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said that one person was killed in the first shooting, which occurred just after 7 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a large dormitory. Flinchum said that at least 20 more people were killed at Norris Hall, an academic building.

The gunman, whose identity has not been released, is among the dead. Flinchum wouldn’t say whether the shooter had killed himself.

ABC News has confirmed that there were two separate bomb threats last week at Virginia Tech that targeted engineering buildings. The first was directed at Torgersen Hall, a classroom and laboratory building, while the second was directed at multiple engineering buildings. Students and staff were evacuated, and the university had offered a $5,000 reward for information into the threats.

University president Steger said that police have not officially tied together the two shootings.

Several details are still unfolding, including the exact number of fatalities (One report said 32 were killed) and what may have motivated the massacre. ABC noted that such an incident is unprecedented on a college campus, where about 20 people have been killed on all American campuses combined since the Department of Education formally began collecting data in the early 1990s.

S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president for Security On Campus, Inc. who has been studying campus crime for 15 years, said he watched the news at Virginia Tech unfold in “utter shock…. Nothing like this has happened before.”

Regrettably, the political implications of the tragedy began almost instantly.

A regular reader emailed me with some disconcerting links, including:

* One far-right blog said he was “awaiting word of the gunman’s nationality and religious leanings, that will be critically telling.” Apparently, the post implies that if the shooter was Muslim, it would suggest the massacre was related to terrorism. (Some reports indicate the shooter was a young Asian male.)

* Glenn Reynolds quickly denounced local gun laws.

These things do seem to take place in locations where it’s not legal for people with carry permits to carry guns, though, and I believe that’s the case where the Virginia Tech campus is concerned. I certainly wish that someone had been in a position to shoot this guy at the outset….

And reader John Lucas, who works with a Virginia law firm, emails that Va. Tech is a “gun-free zone.” Well, for those who follow the law. There was an effort to change that but it failed: “A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.” That’s unfortunate.

* Another is complaining that some are complaining about the NRA.

Folks, Virginia Tech is still in the midst of a crisis. Students, right now, are being told to stay indoors, away from windows. The community is in a state of shock and horror.

Can we wait a few hours before using the massacre to push a political agenda?

My best wishes go out to the victims, their families, and VT community.

* One far-right blog said he was “awaiting word of the gunman’s nationality and religious leanings, that will be critically telling.” Apparently, the post implies that if the shooter was Muslim, it would suggest the massacre was related to terrorism. (Some reports indicate the shooter was a young Asian male.)

This is beyond the pale. The guy is waiting to confirm his racist desires, and that’s all this means to him. What if the guy was another unhinged right-winger like McVeigh? Would that be critically telling? I suppose since CB provided the link I should go there myself and ask.

Can we wait a few hours before using the massacre to push a political agenda?

Exactly. That’s what’s so disgusting about the instant spinning.

  • I agree CB. Condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
    Let’s make sure that there was no one else responsible and if there are others, make sure they are apprehended.

    Just a side however… nationality or religious leanings be damned, this was a senseless act of violence. “Terror” under the current admin’s definition.

  • Very well put, CB. I didn’t watch the press briefing, but MSNBC.com quotes Dana Perino: “The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed.”

    Was she asked about this or did she just want to make sure that the base knew that Bush wasn’t going to pull a Clinton with Columbine??

  • Re: #1: The guy updated. He also doesn’t allow anonymous commenting and I didn’t feel like registering.

    “Some reporting has the gunman as a young Asian looking for his girlfriend. Sadly, I would prefer this be a massacre of passion than one of terrorism.”

    If anyone can explain, how is this critically telling? Would it have been more critically telling for the author if the guy was a Muslim illegal immigrant from Iran? Would it have been less if he was a conservative right-wing American Protestant?

    And what does the author’s last statement mean?

  • Re: #3 “The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed.”

    I can’t help but be curious if anyone followed up and asked if the White House thought that that statement also included the White House.

  • Can we wait a few hours before using the massacre to push a political agenda?

    Tell that to the White House.

    Here’s the complete text, it looks like, of their first official pronouncement on the subject:
    “He was horrified and his immediate reaction was one of deep concern for the families of the victims, the victims themselves, the students, the professors and all the people of Virginia who have dealt with this shocking incident,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

    “His thoughts and prayers are with them.”

    “The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed,” Perino said, noting that Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings held a conference on school gun violence last October.

    “Certainly, bringing a gun into a school domitory and shooting … is against the law and something someone should be held accountable for,” Perino said.

  • My best wishes go out to the victims, their families, and VT community.

    You may have meant “VA” community.

    The religion or nationality of the shooter is irrelevant. Only the guilty are guilty.

    My prayers are with the victims and their families.

  • Can we wait a few hours before using the massacre to push a political agenda?

    Well, given what’s being debated in the Georgia General Assembly today, NO.

    If those deaths can bring a few legislators to their senses, I don’t their loved ones would mind.

  • It’s an awful thing to hear about.

    “Sadly, I would prefer this be a massacre of passion than one of terrorism.”

    That has got to be one of the fucking stupidest comments ever. Doesn’t matter if it happened because of passion or terrorism. Dead is dead. A lot of people are dead and a lot more are going to be dealing the pain of this for a very long time.

  • how can this possibly generate a “pro-gun” response? the odds that people would have been carrying in class is what, virtually nil?

    the only logical policy response, when someone manages to shoot dozens of people in a confined space, is to look at (a) the availability of handguns to disturbed would-be criminals; (b) clip size (he couldn’t have been stopping to reload very often or you’d think he would have been mobbed); (c) firing speed. in otherwords, to see what gun controls could have helped.

  • Sadly, I would prefer this be a massacre of passion than one of terrorism.”

    This is why I don’t go to blogs run by people from the shallow end of the gene pool. They’re too fucking stupid for my contempt.

    As for the drivel from the WH (a shining example of why we should ban the passive voice) I have this to say:

    Burn In Hell. People were slaughtered, more might die and you flaccid worms come out with this bullshit response that shows more concern for the right to bear arms than the dead and wounded. Go fuck yourselves with rusty farm implements and then rot in hell for eternity.

  • Glenn Reynolds wrote:

    “These things do seem to take place in locations where it’s not legal for people with carry permits to carry guns, though, and I believe that’s the case where the Virginia Tech campus is concerned. I certainly wish that someone had been in a position to shoot this guy at the outset….”

    Not that I want to dive into the politics of this right away, either, but GR’s point is idiotic – there are SO many reasons you wouldn’t want the students to be carrying guns. If the law-abiding student failed to take down the attacker, the attacker would now have an additional firearm – and no real need to reload. Furthermore, picture an entire campus loaded with armed students. Once the first shots go off, you would potentially have dozens of students waving guns in the hall. They’d be just as likely to open fire on each other than on the actual murderer, not to mention all the additional people who could die in the crossfire. Also, the police would have a horrible, horrible time trying to separate friend from foe. This oversimplified “if everyone had guns, this wouldn’t have happened” attitude is terribly wrong.

    I feel simply awful about this whole tragedy.

  • It is not like Virginia Tech is Berkeley. This clearly Red State on Red State Crime. Why would W include a “God gave us guns” comment in this? What a complete tool! As far as the race of the person who committed this shooting, what difference does that make? Islamic terrorists are going to start attacking us by killing our engineering students? WTF? I guess when Lou Dobbs comes out today and suggests this person was an illegal immigrant the circle will be complete.

    Totally unbelievable.

  • Can we wait a few hours before using the massacre to push a political agenda?

    Well, if Virginia didn’t have one of the most lax gun laws in the country, this might not have happened at all. So, no, we can’t wait.

    Lexington (my town) is about an hour and a half drive from Blacsburg, and we send a lot of kids to college there. It’s going to be a black day here too, even if none of the victims was from here.

  • do you remember when olbermann correlated terrorist alerts with bad news about the white house? i swear, someone dies just before the republicans have to face some scrutiny. it’s tin foil hat territory, but i’m going to look into this.

  • Why should we who have kids and family and neigbors kids in schools ALL ACROSS VA wait to find out if this is the second of 9-11 or not? My kid is in a southern VA school and I want to know if she is at risk or if this is one lone gunman.

    Maybe you folks without kids possibly in harms way are the ones who should chill out and wait to see what transpires. 9-11 happened. As did all the other bloody attacks by Islamo Fascists around the world. It is not unreasonable to ask if this is an attack by terrorists. We don’t need to wait until the second plane impacts anymore to raise the question.

    AJStrata

  • Don’t blame the wingnut blogs. Their fearless leader Der Fuhrer Bush jumped straight into “right for people to bear arms” before even waiting to get a firm body count – so no wonder the cold-dead-hands followers will follow.

  • …where about 20 people have been killed on all American campuses combined since the Department of Education formally began collecting data in the early 1990s.

    One of those happened about a block away from where I lived when I was a student at Purdue in the late 90s. I can only imagine from that experience what a scary and ominous environment exists at Virginia Tech now.

    My heart goes out to the victims and their families and all of the innocent students.

  • Well,the righties (as usual) have it wrong, but I think Larry Johnson has it just right (you can click my name below to go to That’s Another Fine Mess and read the whole thing, with hyperlinks):

    Okay. Big deep breath. This is horrible and this is tragic and this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq. Consider the following:

    04/15/07 Reuters: 19 bodies found in Baghdad on Saturday

    Police found the bodies of 19 people in various parts of Baghdad in the past 24 hours, police said

    04/15/07 Reuters: 20 Iraqi troops and policemen abducted
    A group linked to al Qaeda said it abducted 20 Iraqi troops and policemen and demanded the release of all Sunni women held in Iraq’s prisons, according to a Web statement

    04/15/07 Reuters: 4 killed by suicide bombers in Mosul
    Four people, including two Iraqi soldiers, were killed and 16 wounded when two oil trucks driven by suicide bombers exploded outside a military base in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

    04/15/07 AP: Suicide bomber kills 5, wounds 11 in northwest Baghdad
    a suicide bomber blew himself up on a minibus in northwest Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 11, police and hospital officials said.

    04/15/07 AP: 37 die as car bomb hits near Iraq shrine
    A car bomb blasted through a busy bus station near one of Iraq’s holiest shrines Saturday, killing at least 37 people, police and hospital officials said.

    Let’s total the score: at least 65 Iraqis dead in four attacks vs. 22 Americans shot at Virginia Tech. Whoops, forgot the 20 kidnapped policemen. Can you imagine?

    The next time you hear Dick Cheney or George Bush blame the public attitude regarding Iraq on the media’s failure to report “good news”, examine carefully our reaction to the shooting at Viginia Tech. Look at our collective shock. Our horrified reaction. The public sorrow. Yet, in truth, this is an exceptional, unusual day in America. It is not our common experience. But we cannot say the same about Iraq.

  • To answer Glenn Reynolds, campus police–not everybody–could have firearms for such a situation. In 2006, over 400 people were murdered in Philadelphia and this year so far over 100 people have been murdered–primarily due to guns.

  • Aren’t schools universally places where guns are banned? Isn’t that the norm? What kind of BS is the White House spewing now? This is more about Gonzales and his testimony tomorrow, than about gun rights! These Cretans really want to change the subject.

  • My best wishes go out to the victims, their families, and VT community.

    Well said. And IMHO angry young man has his tinfoil hat on too tight in #17. There’s no way this person’s rampage could be induced by a whitehouse worried about Gonzales’ testimony.

    As for all the gun-laws-would-prevent-this people… just think about it, OK? They won’t. Anyone who’s willing to shoot 50+ people would be willing to violate any number of gun laws. This guy apparently had a bulletproof vest on. If having a gun was illegal, do you think it would stop him?

    The programs which license people to carry concealed weapons require extensive background checks and professional training to prevent the types of things described in post #14. Yes, bad things can happen, but that is always true. Good things can also happen when screened, trained people have the means to defend themselves and others.

    (dons fireproof suit and ducks for cover)

  • Up here in Washington state it’s very easy to get a permit to carry a gun. We’ve also had 3 recent shooting rampages. Only in one incident (a shopping center) was there a private citizen with a gun, willing and able to go up against the shooter, and unfortunately he was shot first. Untrained citizens carrying pistols, are no match for madmen with semi-automatic weapons.

  • Ditto to CB and all here who send their sincere best wishes to all those affected by this horrible tragedy. May all find peace in Heaven’s good time.

  • I’m currently working on a project with a woman whose son is an engineering student at VA Tech. I don’t know what she knows but I do know from her co-workers that she’s not in the office. Things may be fine, but all it takes is a peripheral tie to something like this to cast it in a very different light. These students are people’s kids and siblings and friends and grandkids…

  • If it is a ‘crime of passion’, one has to wonder what ‘passion’ could make someone think it is ok to kill so many innocent people. A comment at Huffpo wondered if it has something to do with a person on anti-depressants. When they don’t work, they sometimes make things much worse.

  • As for all the gun-laws-would-prevent-this people… just think about it, OK? They won’t.

    [Hides flamethrower behind back]

    Sure, fine. Just like all of the drunk driving laws in the world won’t stop some shit head from getting loaded and then getting behind the wheel. I don’t understand the “It’s going to happen anyway” argument. Why do I only hear it when the crime is gun-related?

  • ABC noted that such an incident is unprecedented on a college campus…

    Obviously, the University of Texas clock tower shooting was set a precedent in 1966. Or is the leap from 16 to 32 such a difference in magnitude?

    I don’t want to too polemic while we’re still in the aftermath, but the comments quoted by Tom Cleaver at #22 are quite relevant.

  • And, Tom #22, you have to multiply your horror factor figures by 10+ — one whole order of magnitude — to equate population discrepancy (U.S.A. 300m; Iraq 27m).

  • 29 people dead…
    22…
    32…
    He was an Asian…
    Two separate shootings…
    Bomb threats last week….

    What we are seeing is the media functioning like a fumbling gossipmonger.

    Too much misinformation…
    Running around my brain.
    Wake me up when the facts are in.

    But since rampant bullshitting is the order of the day…
    Here is my prediction:

    Killer was a white male republican Christian terrorist who liked to play violent video games….

  • Good things can also happen when screened, trained people have the means to defend themselves and others. — Racerex, @25

    ‘s maybe. But, you’re not talking about Virginia. People from NYcome down here to buy their guns because our screening requirements are a joke. As for training.. Yes, kids learn how to handle hunting rifles in middle school (part of curriculum, though you can opt out. Same as you can opt out of sex-ed, but fewer people opt out of the first than the second) but I don’t think anything else is required after that. That’s what I meant when I said our gun laws stank.

    Tom Cleaver, @22 Yeah, within minutes of getting over the first shock (mostly at *where* it happened), my thoughts were along the lines “a good day in Baghdad” but I wasn’t gonna expose my callouseness like that.

  • Jesus Christ. Just watched the press conference, and the response was sickening. How in the Hell did they let a shooting happen- where they knew they had a shooter out in the open- and not lock the campus down for over two hours? It’s not like this wasn’t predictable- most of the infamous school shootings involve students, so the most logical thing would be that it was a student, and therefore, that other students might be targetted.

    This ain’t political, this is disgusting. The first two dying, okay, maybe that couldn’t be prevented. But the next 30? Those kids should have been behind locked doors well ahead of that (If two hours ain’t enough time to alert a campus, then they really need to rethink security measures), with patrols all around.

    The responses from the VT president are disgusting.

  • On September 11, 2001, it wasn’t legal ( anymore) for airline pilots to carry guns. Bush failed to uphold the USA constitution prior to that day. The commies running the USSA are safe and the sheeple are…..well…. sheeple awaiting their slaughter.

  • Trying to wrap my head around orange’s post in #30. He ignores my question, which was “If having a gun was illegal, do you think it would stop him?”

    The answer IMO is no. But orange asks:

    Just like all of the drunk driving laws in the world won’t stop some shit head from getting loaded and then getting behind the wheel. I don’t understand the “It’s going to happen anyway” argument. Why do I only hear it when the crime is gun-related?

    I’m wondering WTF does that question have to do with anything? Maybe that’s the most common use of the argument, but does that impact the validity of the argument? Nope.

    As for your example, drunk drivers are deterred (or not deterred) by the laws against drunk driving, not lesser violations. We can probably agree that many are deterred, although the ones who cause accidents obviously were not. But it’s safe to say that they aren’t deterred by laws against public intoxication. Same goes for violent gun crimes being committed. Some violent criminals are deterred by the laws against murder, and some are not. But it makes sense that few if any of the homicidal maniacs are deterred by gun ownership laws.

    What pisses off the 2nd amendment crowd is this: We already have lots of gun laws. And they make sense in most cases. But overly restrictive gun laws can and do take a fundamental right away from law abiding citizens, a right which millions of Americans have enjoyed for 200 years. Gun laws are often promoted by people who have never enjoyed that right, and are willing to throw other people’s rights away, often believing that guns have no legitimate purpose, which is false.

    Can guns be misused? Obviously. But cars are often misused, and about 34,000 people are killed in auto crashes in the United States each year. There are about 17,000 alcohol related car accident deaths in the United States each year. If we banned cars and/or alcohol, maybe it would make us all safer. But we don’t make drinking or owning a car a crime*, because most of us can handle alcohol and driving a car.

    Some stats…

    According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there were about 215 million privately owned guns in 1999.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, there were 28,663 firearm deaths in the US in 2000. Of that figure, 16,586 (58%) were suicides, 11,071 (39%) were homicides (including 270 deaths from police action), and 1,006 (4%) were due to accidents or undetermined causes.

    But beyond any of that, if you really want to activate the Republican base, go ahead and roll out some harsh new gun laws that still won’t deter anyone who’s willing to kill people. Go ahead and activate their base, and see if that saves any lives.

    * Actually, we did make drinking a crime once, in an attempt to make people safer. That stupidity made criminals out of millions of Americans.

  • * One far-right blog said he was “awaiting word of the gunman’s nationality and religious leanings, that will be critically telling.” Apparently, the post implies that if the shooter was Muslim, it would suggest the massacre was related to terrorism. (Some reports indicate the shooter was a young Asian male.)

    Color me unsurprised. I was friends with the guy who accidentally blew himself up outside Memorial Stadium during an OU football game. He was a pretty hardline right wing superlibertarian kind of guy, far more likely to be in the mountain country of Oregon than Afghanistan, though you wouldn’t know that from all the rightwing blogs that incessantly pushed the idea that he was a Muslim. In the end, though, what he mostly was was a kid who like to blow things up who made a dumb mistake that cose him his life.

  • Bill Sammon’s son, Ben, tells FOX Cable News that he was on campus, on the drill field, attending a fundraiser at 9am…… hmmmm? What was the fundraiser? Did it have anything to do with campus police not locking the campus down???

  • Read an analysis of the influences in our “Chain Letter Society” that may be precipitating events like the tragedy at Virginia Tech and how our focus on winning and being number one may be fostering a generation of children with fully inadequate coping skills who have a misguided sense of self-worth…here:

    http://www.thoughttheater.com

  • A horrible tragedy. But like all shocking violent stories the first response after the shock is to try to make some sense out of why it occurred. It’s a normal way of reducing the shock. The more information obtained the better to try to make some sense of what may even be totally senseless, in order to reduce suffering.

  • Racerx wrote:

    “The programs which license people to carry concealed weapons require extensive background checks and professional training to prevent the types of things described in post #14. Yes, bad things can happen, but that is always true. Good things can also happen when screened, trained people have the means to defend themselves and others.”

    For the record, I wasn’t attempting to make a broad statement (at #14) on the right to bear arms; I was simply pointing out that a huge number of students carrying concealed weapons would be just as likely to cause great harm as the original shooter, contrary to what Glenn Reynolds thinks.

    Training no doubt helps, but my impression is that training is essentially limited to a day’s course (8 hours in Michigan). This is less than people are given in driving, but people still do all sorts of dumb things while driving. I fail to see how a day’s course in firearms safety and violent confrontations would really avoid any of the possibilities mentioned in my post. It’s one thing to be able to say what the right behavior is in a stable classroom environment, it’s quite another to be able to make the right decisions when bullets start flying around your head without warning in the middle of an ordinary day and things are complete pandemonium.

    Anyway, as I said, my post wasn’t about the validity of concealed weapons laws – I don’t have a strong feeling about them yet – my only gripe was with the oversimplified view that somehow lots of concealed weapons = a better, safer society. It is just as wrong, and flawed, to turn this tragedy into the ultimate pro-gun case study as it is to turn it into the ultimate gun control case study.

  • STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE TO BUY GUNS! It’s that easy, cut off the legal selling of guns, you kill the fear of someone coming into your house and shooting you, then no one finds the need for a gun to “protect” them.

    Also, NO MATTER HOW RESPECTABLE A PERSON IS, PUT A GUN IN THEIR HAND DURING A SPLIT SECOND OF RAGE AND ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

    COMMON AMERICA SMARTEN UP ON YOUR LAWS AND DON’T ALLOW GUNS TO BE SOLD SO EASILY!

    Oh, and get the hell out of this selfish war. You’ve got enough damn oil.

    Your country has the POTENTIAL to be something great.. we’re all waiting?

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