did the shooter actually dress up as a boy scout?

Thats assinine. It's not like they arrested the guy that morning and then gave him back his gun and said have a nice day. 99% of the creative types I knew in the hardcore or industrial noise scenes could be classified as loonies if their creative work is a criteria for sanity.

Suing the college is only going to make some lawyers and parents wealthy. The kids will still be very fucking dead.

The logical conclusion of your arguement is all surveillance all the time.

But its still ok for a hundred people a day to get blown up in Iraq. We must maintain that rate of deaths at all costs or not be loyal americans.

I was wondering about that - or was it one of those military cadet outfits?

One thing you know is going to happen is theres gonna be a load of fools rising up proclaiming that this blokes writing is genius, like he was a misunderstood prophet or something awful.

or help them out, which is the way of getting to the root of the problem i feel.

pretty much.

and you know, it is certainly not unheard of to be a scumbag and be gifted
at something, like painting or writing or music...but this asshole just WAS
NOT. a preemptive "fuck off" to his burgeoning fan club.

You're right Jennthebenn. People will make a martyr out of this guy. The media go crazy and it's on every news break around the world, it's crazy. That's exactly why these people do it -- they want to be made martyrs. They feel they're owed something and they want to be remembered as such. What if they reported there was a mass killing at a college, but never named the martyr or showed pictures of him? If this guy knew he wasn't going to get any reaction or attention, would he have done it?

aye. You ever read Crime and Punishment (before i sound like a smartarse, it took me 9 months to read, and i aint well read), you get a Raskolnikov feeling from this bloke, i wonder if he read that and felt like the character was something like him but neglected to appreciate the cautionary aspect of it

dude, the guy was insane, i don't think his actions fall within the realm of rational choice... there was a crazy rationality in it, but crazy is the operating word here.

You have to be crazy to do something liek this, sure, but there's also crazy folk out there who would not play apart in mass killings. How much does stupidity factor into it? Whether crazy or not, I believe the people who do this type of thing want to be made martyrs. They want the public and the people who may not have given them the time which they felt they deserved, to think "You really were tortured and a bad guy who didn't just lie down and take it" and be mystified by their cruel act.

Youre correct there, you get the feeling this character had the influences but not the mind to truly understand them with regard to himself.
This is the thing with gun control, maybe this act was a complete loss of sanity on his part, and maybe without a gun he goes and stabs someone he hates rather than shooting 30 people. Ive made my point about guns vs. other weapons already.

I am beginning to wonder whether or not it's worth debating with you. All I did was factually recount that the police spent too much critical time intwerviewing an alleged acquaintance (I don't know who the fuck you're writing about) of Seung-Hui instead of actively pursuing Seung-Hui. They erroneously concluded that the iniital shooting of the girl in his dorm and the R.A. was a domestic homicide. There is no debating this fact that the police made a faulty assumption. I realize no officer or protocol is 100% perfect, but it seems quite inexcusable that the police and VA Tech made no attempts (at least according the the information thus known) to announce to the students that a double homicide had been committed on campus that morning and that the suspect was still at large and definitely still on campus. (the police had locket it down). It's my understanding that virtually no one, relatively speaking, on campus really knew what was going on until he opened fired again some two hours later. I call this negligence, at least on some level, sorry.


Stop worrying and being paranoid for your own sake for a second, will ya?

No, I was just stating the unequivocal fact that humans do not learn if they are not forced to pay for their mistakes, which is, unfortunately, absolutely true. Would you opt for things to possibly get better? It seems you've resigned yourself to only expect the worst.
No, I insisted earlier that any constitutional reform would be trepedatious territory for that very reason...but it's still necessary...not just because of this tragedy, but because of the tragedies that occur every day that could be diminished if a reasonable policy were pursued.
The Justice Department could work with State Governments to strengthen our existing laws and regulation. It won't happen though, although I will expect more hot air to be blown around. Too many gun nuts are brainwashed and the lobbies that support the gun manufacturers (you know, the human scum you're supporting) are too wealthy to be stopped without some aggressive policy. The vast majority of lawmakers are in their pockets. I just hope a massacre like this one will work on some of their sensibilities to change things maybe a little for the better.



And I am with you on the last sentiment. I find it really phoney that people get so worked into a tizzy just because it was thirty-three victims when so many die in Iraq needlesly (bad policy, outmoded equipment) and furthermore, it's ridiculous considering how many handgun murders there are every day. (Which is precisely why in my very first post in this thread, I alluded to a attitudinal change in our gun laws to be "long overdue.") You can thank Virginia and it's lackadaisical laws on handguns for most of those homicides in New York you get every year, tesla69.

he has a valid concern!

your own lack of any paranoia about what you proposed is more bothersome than any up-spin to his side. surely you know that you, I and just about everyone on this board would be at some point cause for concern for whoever is in authority.

Virginia's gun laws are laughable; it's obvious that should be looked at. hell, the whole system should be looked at. however, I'm of the mind that furthering the police's search (and surveillance) privileges is not only not going to stop the truely insane, it is in itself dangerous.

I think it's a little shortsighted to believe that gun control (of any kind) is the cure for society's worst woes. it's like using a bandaid to stop a sucking chest wound!

I do think you are right that something needs to be done (and maybe something drastic), but I think that the core of the problem is too deeply ingrained into all of our lives for anything to actually work.

today it's guns; tomorrow, IEDs. there's never going to be any "going back".



PS: just because I disagree, doesn't mean that I'm doing it out of spite. please don't take it personally!

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?...bc.msn.com/&fg=

Cho Seung-Hui sent a collection of videos to NBC, apparently mailed during the two hour lull between the shootings, the link above is to the msnbc news video feed, and has the video itself

Never said it was a cure. Go to hell, floatingslowly.
State your own damn case and stop leeching off of me.
I would avoid that video too. A friend who stopped by tonight told me about it. I switched to Headline News and after one commercial, it went right to it.
I muted it after about five seconds and then flipped the channel after about twenty seconds.

how the fuck am I leeching off you?

there really is no debate with you is there?

enjoy your fancy magic frogs.

Don't care. Can't read you. Something half-cocked, I'm sure.

hahahah

you are one seriously weird person. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to respond to your machine-gun pm's fast enough (I wasn't hanging on your every word like you may believe). I'll be happy to "comply" however.

my bad for even attempting discussion. no worries though, I'll leave it to the professionals from now on. :)

[/transmission]

Geez, there is so much here, I'm not looking at every post to see if this was said before. But if they want people to stop doing this, they need to stop giving the ones who did it before so much attention. These kids do this because they feel like outcasts and nobody notices them, and they know their face will be on every news channel and internet home page. Even though they will be dead, they get the satisfaction that now people recognize them. There is probably some kid sitting at home right now watching the news after a bad day of school thinking "Yeah, that's what I'll do. Then they will HAVE to notice me." What needs to be done is stop giving attention when this stuff happens. When a shotting like this occurs, give proper grievances towards the victim, but do and say nothing for the assailant. Then hopefully kids who might have a tendancy towards actions like this may not be as inclined to do so, because they will see they aren't going to get the results they would want from it. Unfortunately this will never happen, because while the media pretends to care about the lives lost, what they really care about is making good news. I mean, how many people at NBC do you think were jumping excitedly when they realize the shooter in Virginia sent them the package? It's sick how little they truly care, and it only perpetuates the cycle.

Not that it wasn't obvious, but the dude was insane.....damn.