Shooting at Virginia Tech

[Rockefella]

Oh.. wow. I just got a phone call 5 minutes ago from my mom while watching television. A guy by the name of Matt La Porte from my home town, a person I knew before high school, is one of the victims of the shooting.

He's been confirmed dead.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Oh wow. thats heavy.

Sorry Dude. to you and His family. no one deserves to go out like that.

[Rockefella]

Oh wow. thats heavy.

Sorry Dude. to you and His family. no one deserves to go out like that.

I definitely will send condolences out to the family, as I'm sure everyone here will as well. It's just odd that it hit so close to home when my town has about 15,000 people, and of those, about 300 being of my grade level. (He was the same age as me)

[IBrake4Rainbows]

It's just one of those things, I suppose.

Latest reports Suggest that they're is the possibility of two shooters. the Main assailant is now believed to be an On-Campus asian student. among the dead are two lecturers in the Engineering faculty.

There have been Bizarre reports of him wearing what appeared to be a Scouts outfit.

Other reports suggest the violent nature of the attack - with a hospital official saying that each victim had at least three bullets shot into their bodies.

This is very, very sad.

[baddabang]

Actually in a situation where some lunatic walks into my classroom and without warning starts blasting people away I would probably try to use my desk to protect myself (here in denmark they are 1X2 meters and made from 3cm of highly compressed wood on a 4mm steel plate)

I am surprised that nobody had a gun of there own and used it for self protection.

and how did he get close enough to kill over 30 people with a 9mm and a .22?
I mean a .22 is not going to kill you unless he hits you directly in the heart or head and even the 9mm has very little effect past 40-50 meters.

Have you ever been to a popular university? In some places, mostly student centers, there is a massive amount of students in one place at one time. I go to a small state school and during peak hours of activity on campus its very crowded in the student union and even in dorm lobbies, and academic halls. Now take a big school like VT that has thousands more students on campus, if you shoot randomly into a crowd the chances are your going to hit someone and cause injury.

Oh.. wow. I just got a phone call 5 minutes ago from my mom while watching television. A guy by the name of Matt La Porte from my home town, a person I knew before high school, is one of the victims of the shooting.

He's been confirmed dead.

Sorry to hear that dude

I don't think so. If someone's already crazy, I doubt playing a game like Grand Theft Auto will immediately throw them over the edge and force them to go on a shooting spree. My guess about this story is that the kid was an engineer (he shot up an engineering department building), got fed up with the workload and deadlines, so he took it out on classmates and innocent people.

I have to agree with you here. I can see video games potentially causing problems with middle school students or even younger high school students, but this kid was in college, unless he was mentally insane (which I doubt greatly) then he knew what he was doing, and also knew the consequences of his actions. Thus the suicide.

[john14]

Originally Posted by Rockefella
Oh.. wow. I just got a phone call 5 minutes ago from my mom while watching television. A guy by the name of Matt La Porte from my home town, a person I knew before high school, is one of the victims of the shooting.

He's been confirmed dead.

Rocke, I am sorry to hear that. Condolences to his family. I was worried when I heard about the shooting because one of my close female friends is studying at an American university/college as an exchange student. She's in Buffalo, New York though.

I want to express my condolences to the families and the friends of the 32 Virginia Tech. students.

[Sweeney921]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/vte...ing/index.html

[Jack_Bauer]

Well, this is the guy behind the massacre. Cho Seung-hui, a 23 year old English major from South Korea. It seems he left a note behind in his dorm room explaining some of his reasons, the nature of which has been described as "disturbing". Apparently he had also been referred to counselling after producing "troubled" work in his creative writing class.

It seems any possibility of there being a second gunman or an accomplice has been dismissed. Just one loner with a deeply disturbed mind who flipped out one day and went on a rampage.

[werty]

I dont know if this has been covered already, but i did notice alot of you arguing about whether guns should be allowed or not

anyways my point was going to be that there are 110 million guns, not including military...just personally owned guns in America

so there is absolutely no way there is ever going to be no guns

I personally believe it's the person that kills...not the gun

[Timothy (in VA)]

Oh.. wow. I just got a phone call 5 minutes ago from my mom while watching television. A guy by the name of Matt La Porte from my home town, a person I knew before high school, is one of the victims of the shooting.

He's been confirmed dead.

That's terrible. I'm very sorry to hear that; my condolences.

There's always been a rivalry between the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, but it shouldn't be surprising that that's not the case for today. There are a lot of people over here who know people at Tech.

[ANDREW G]

Well, this is the guy behind the massacre. Cho Seung-hui, a 23 year old English major from South Korea. It seems he left a note behind in his dorm room explaining some of his reasons, the nature of which has been described as "disturbing". Apparently he had also been referred to counselling after producing "troubled" work in his creative writing class.

It seems any possibility of there being a second gunman or an accomplice has been dismissed. Just one loner with a deeply disturbed mind who flipped out one day and went on a rampage.

Just looking at the picture he looks sick Not to start a debate but if more normal people had guns his kill count whould be far less!

[baddabang]

This is an awful tragedy and unfortunately in the end there will be stricter security measures at campuses across the nation and still no one will quit eunderstand why these things happpen.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, the survivors, and their families.

Indeed. Here is part of an email I received from the Dean of students on my campus.

"Today's tragedy impacts all of us in higher education and causes us to
reinforce our commitment to campus safety. I know that each of you are
extraordinarily sensitive to this issue and that you will be taking all
appropriate steps to continually address safety issues and to reassure
your campus community as well as parents and local community members
that our campuses are safe and secure.

As the tragedy at Virginia Tech is reviewed, we will also be reviewing
University safety policies to ensure that we continually improve safety
and security."

Just what I need more rent-a-cops writing parking tickets at 1:30 in the morning.

[ANDREW G]

I know you guys don"t like pictures but this is the shooter of all that were killed

[Pando]

My condolences to all the families of the victims and the people involved. I just hope everyone here is well and accounted for.

Oh.. wow. I just got a phone call 5 minutes ago from my mom while watching television. A guy by the name of Matt La Porte from my home town, a person I knew before high school, is one of the victims of the shooting.

He's been confirmed dead.

It sucks to hear that.

There have been 19 school shootings in 10 years in the USA.

There is a problem there, that isn't being experienced or replicated elsewhere in the world.

That problem needs to be identified and addressed, otherwise the matter is just being swept under the rug. "Our kids are turning into murderous nut-jobs, but as long as we can keep them away from guns: mission accomplished!"

The fact is that kids shouldn't be attempting to murder in the first place.

It's both. It's not just one or the other. You need a maniac to kill a person and a tool to do it with. With a gun, murder is simple. It's not like in developed countries where guns are illegal there are various knife murders (etc) to bring the country up to the US average. You'd be an idiot not to recognize that there's a correletion. Do you think the lunatics behind the Virginia Tech tragedy could've done it with a knife? A sword? A Bat?

A huge number of murders in the US are cases of domestic violence. You can see how it might be a heat-of-the-moment type of deal; if the same situation happens and there's no gun around, people don't really seem to go for the other methods. Guns make killing a person extremely easy, so they're dangerous at points of high tension.

Quoted you both to show I agree as to what is the core of the problem.

When it comes to the gun control debate there are a few things we need to keep in mind. I'm willing to bet that in well over 90% of the killings with a gun the assailant wouldn't have been capable to do it with another weapon or by hand.

Home owner vs burglar - it's a fact that the guns in the houses have been misused many times more than they were used in the way they were "intended". A gun in a house is many times more likely to go of on a family member than a criminal.

Why sudden legislation changes hasn't given the results that were intended; in a small state like DC one is always relatively close to a relatively unguarded state border and within the largest gun manufacturer on the globe. For that reason there will always be more guns in a state in the US than in a country of the same size in Europe for instance.

In the hands of the criminals the guns also travel across to neighboring countries, like Mexico - hence the availability of guns there. With the rate the US is manufacturing weapons there will be no shortage of guns in the Americas in the near future.

Here in Finland guns are quite rare (on a global comparison), guns are mostly found among hunters, organized criminals and (relatively few) war/gun "enthusiasts". Random people/criminals don't usually carry guns here and most gun deaths here are caused by legally owned guns in combined with alcohol.

edit:

I know you guys don"t like pictures but this is the shooter of all that were killed

On-topic pictures are more than appreciated.

[MadMax13]

Apparently he left a note, and i notived it used words only written in scripture, so it was most likely religiously motivated...