Mariacristina Blog Archive for Virginia Tech

<b>Arms Control Begins at Home</b>

April 29, 2007 at 3:28 pm &#183; Filed under Virginia Tech, compassion, meditation, violence

I need to be hit with a ton of bricks for a message to sink in. For a long time I&#39;ve spoken about gun control, nuclear disarmament, and crisis prevention, but it took the VT massacre to finally get the message. I know this must appear selfish to the millions of people across the globe who wake up to gunshots on a regular basis, but since my own personal life is relatively peaceful, I didn&#39;t do anything overt to help stop violence. Until now.

I used to think that all I could do was to practice a non-reactionary life by not exploding in anger toward those who cross me. Even though anger management and meditation on a worldwide scale to me is the answer to violence, I now think political activism must also be added to my list of solutions. No more cheering from the sidelines. My voice will be heard beyond the walls of my comfortable home.

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<b>Making sense of slaughter</b>

April 20, 2007 at 7:17 pm &#183; Filed under Virginia Tech, violence

At the Virginia Tech memorial service, Nikki Giovanni gave a moving and memorable speech. Her words were poetry in motion, urging the students to "embrace their mourning". She reminded us that no victim ever asked to be rubbed out, citing examples of atrocities from Africa to the Appalachians.

As an individual, I can shape what I want my life to be by acting on my dreams. That&#39;s what the students and teachers at VT were doing. But somehow their dream got tangled up with a madman&#39;s nightmare. Caught defensless and unaware, they were slaughtered as if they were still targets on a shooting range. Easy to mark.

No, this guy wasn&#39;t insane. He chose to commit evil. But a long time ago a shift had taken place in his mind that separated him from the rest of the human race. He wasn&#39;t born evil. He had to become the monster. Something or someone shaped him into what he was.

Where does evil begin? How do I reconcile the opposing images of slaughter with the fact of my own continued existence? I don&#39;t think there&#39;s enough time left in my life to figure out the answers to these questions.

In the meantime, I act. I embrace the mourning, and also wait in awareness to feel a moment of joy.

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<b>Where were you when it happened?</b>

April 19, 2007 at 3:06 pm &#183; Filed under Virginia Tech, violence

On Monday, the day of the shootings, I went to a yoga class, unaware of the violence unfolding in Blacksburg. The class was serene. Before raising our arms in salutation to the sun, the teacher had us fold our palms over the sternum, then place our hands over the third eye, fingertips touching. We repeated these motions throughout the class, while flowing in and out of the various postures.

I went home, worked for a few hours, and then made lunch. I sat down at the table and reached for the remote. I watch CNN during lunch because I eat alone, and I&#39;m also a glutton for punishment. When I looked at the remote, something surged inside of me. It was a thought, or a sense, that as soon as I turned on the TV I would learn of something catastrophic, something worse than the typical bad news. It was a thought that made me pause.

This strange intuition wasn&#39;t like my usual fears. I worry about imagined events about 50% of the day. It wasn&#39;t fear, it was simple certainty.

When I turned on the TV a nano second after that flash of thought, it was like stepping into a nightmare. Twenty-two shot dead, then thirty-two!

Later, in the evening, I went for a walk. The air was softer and sweeter, the leaves on the trees more vibrant, the sky more blue than I&#39;ve ever seen it. And I thought, this is so beautiful, how happy I am to be walking along this road, enjoying the evening sun reflected off the tops of the live oaks. And all the while I thought about the students and professors, who in this place and time will never again witness a walk down a country road. Their loved ones will never again enjoy the pleasure of their company. Their parents will grieve the loss of their special child until the end of their days.

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Original Source: <a href="http://mariacristina.wordpress.com/tag/virginia-tech/">http://mariacristina.wordpress.com/tag/virginia-tech/</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0</a>.

Christine Swint

2007-05-25

Brent Jesiek

eng

Massacre at Virginia Tech: Let the Media Exploitation Begin

Posted Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 1:43 AM by Justin

I hate it how, whenever we have a national tragedy, journos just eat it up. The TV stations make logos for it, and slogans like "Massacre at Virginia Tech" that become ominous jingles as the anchors and announcers repeat them as a story unfolds.

We&#39;re watching Dateline NBC now (for the first time ever), and the exploitation of the V Tech tragedy is enraging. Matt Lauer is just getting too much mileage out of it.

They take every aspect of the story and make it into an entertainment event. They interview grief counselors and find out how that works. They pull out footage of previous shootings. They interview paramedics and enlighten us about their work. It&#39;s all for entertainment and to create viewership for the network.

The other people who infuriate me when we have a tragedy is the "expert" morons who get on the tube saying how this could have easily been prevented. Their hindsight is perfect, and they get to promote themselves as experts every time an unpreventable tragedy happens. There&#39;s a guy on Dateline now talking about how they should have sent in a massive anti-terrorism response team after the first two people were shot. Come on. We&#39;re going to send in the ATF or the army or whomever every time there&#39;s a shooting? Ten thousand people are shot to death each year in this country. We can&#39;t treat each incident like an act of terrorism as this guy is suggesting.

The other thing I hate about the "if only" experts is that they implicitly blame everyone involved. If only the campus police had done something different. If only the email had gone out sooner warning people to stay in lockdown. None of this was foreseeable - who could have known a campus shooting (like the one that happened in Seattle a few weeks ago) would turn into a massacre?

I say, mourn with those who mourn, and stop exploiting them for publicity and our need to know.

If that weren&#39;t enough, they&#39;re now doing a story about a guy who survived the Columbine massacre but lost his sister, Rachel Scott. Emotional aftermath and all that. Ugh. "Soon, even prayer was no match for the terror..."

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Original Source: <a href="http://www.radicalcongruency.com/20070416-massacre-at-virginia-tech-let-the-media-exploitation-begin">http://www.radicalcongruency.com/20070416-massacre-at-virginia-tech-let-the-media-exploitation-begin</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.5</a>.

Justin Baeder

2007-05-25

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

eng

Tragedy In Virginia As Some Fail To Draw Conclusions From VTech Massacre

By a4g
Point Five Staff Writer @ 4:51 pm
April 16, 2007

--

Fears Raised That Details Of Shooting Might Be Released Into Context-Free Void

--

A massacre at Virginia Tech took the lives of 32 on Monday. But as the sun set, and sketchy details slowly emerged on what was still a largely unclear series of events, an even greater tragedy began to reveal itself, as a few irresponsible Americans had not yet drawn broad life lessons from the atrocity.

"We&#39;ve got scores of kids dead or wounded," said one police officer on the scene, "and there&#39;s folks out there who have the gall to tell me they haven&#39;t decided what this teaches us about America? Sometimes I wonder if I even recognize this country anymore."

While most media reports wisely began to correlate the shootings almost immediately to pre-packaged positions on gun control and video game violence, few ordinary citizens have the resources of a major television network to so neatly encapsulate the horror�- and the life lessons� of the shooting spree into an easily digestible sound bite. This worries analyst Greg Collier, who warned that such individuals were basically "on their own", and may find themselves without a support system when the media machine moves onto the next big story sometime Wednesday or Thursday.

"Listen, if you&#39;re big on Sudden Jihad Syndrome, just for example," said Collier, "you&#39;ve got a window of basically six to twelve hours before they identify the shooter. So what are you waiting for? If you don&#39;t take your shot against Islam now, and this guy turns out not to be a diabolical Muslim convert�- but just some ordinary shmuck with some adjustment problems�- you&#39;re out of the discussion, irrelevant."

He said the same devastating metric applied to race hustlers, white supremacists, militant feminists, conspiracy theorists, and Bill Maher.

"If you haven&#39;t drawn your conclusions by nightfall, you&#39;re going to be trampled by tomorrow&#39;s news cycle. I mean, imagine if right now you were still pondering the implications of the Imus firing, leisurely asking yourself questions about the proper response to boorish behavior in a society that values free speech. Hello? Imus is gone, baby. Al Sharpton already solved racial inequality last week. We&#39;re on school shootings now. We&#39;ve got a country to save, people."

Even worse, mental health professionals feel that important "closure" may not occur in those who are unwilling to quickly find a way to make sense of the murders.

"As humans, we need to make sense of the senseless," said Dr. Jane Krempsky, a grief counselor, television commentator, and frequent expert witness in civil trials.
"We need to exert our control over those things that seem uncontrollable, in order to feel safe once again. Some people just don&#39;t appreciate that the clock is ticking."

Krempsky said the issues involved in this shooting became plain almost the instant that the widely conflicting reports hit the wires, and included increased gun control, liberalized concealed carry, the effects of the Iraq war, America&#39;s obsession with violence, the feminization of the Western male, and the prevalence of pre-marital sex and binge drinking on campus.

As one blogger noted in an iconic post near the end of the day: "Virginia who? Oh yeah... I remember that. Horrible tragedy. That was the one caused by global warming, right?"

--

Original Source: <a href="http://pointfiveblog.com/index.php/2007/04/1260">http://pointfiveblog.com/index.php/2007/04/1260</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

a4g / Point Five Blog

2007-05-25

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

eng

Don't Conceal This Debate

<p>Tom DeLay</p>
<p>Former Tennessee Senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson had a very interesting article in the National Review on April 20th entitled, "Signs of Intelligence?" which dealt with concealed carry laws on the Virginia Tech Campus. In the article he writes,</p>
<blockquote>Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus...</blockquote>
<blockquote>...So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university&#39;s "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.</blockquote>
<p>To read the article in its entirety click <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTIwYzMyZmQ1YzQ1MDNmZTMyYzQ1Y2U3YTU4YzNmNGE=">here</a> (and I would encourage you to do so because Senator Thompson makes a lot of sense on this issue).</p>
<p>I did some research on my own on the background of this Virginia Tech concealed carry debate and I found <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/80510">this article</a> in the Roanoke Times submitted by a Virginia Tech graduate student during August of last year. Entitled "Unarmed and Vulnerable" it is written by a Mr. Bradford Wiles and it says this,</p>
<blockquote>On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my graduate-level class was evacuated from the Squires Student Center. We were interrupted in class and not informed of anything other than the following words: "You need to get out of the building."</blockquote>
<blockquote>Upon exiting the classroom, we were met at the doors leading outside by two armor-clad policemen with fully automatic weapons, plus their side arms. Once outside, there were several more officers with either fully automatic rifles and pump shotguns, and policemen running down the street, pistols drawn.</blockquote>
<blockquote>It was at this time that I realized that I had no viable means of protecting myself...</blockquote>
<blockquote>...This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.</blockquote>
<p>Given the horrific nature of recent events, Mr. Wiles&#39; article has certainly become even more prescient and chilling. Would that Bradford had been in the engineering building that terrible day with the correct law in place - perhaps the tragedy may have ended very differently.</p>
<p>There are many who view supporters of concealed carry laws as fringe crazies who envision life as some kind of ongoing shootem&#39; up western movie. However, statistics don&#39;t lie. Jurisdictions which allow responsible citizens the free exercise of their Second Amendment rights have lower levels of violent crime. Ask most incarcerated criminals whether they take into account existing gun laws in choosing their targets and where they will commit a crime and the answer is a resounding yes.</p>
<p>Call me a crazy if you wish, but I think this pro Second Amendment Argument of mine and others bears listening to.</p>
<p>Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 09:41AM by Tom DeLay</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://www.tomdelay.com/home/2007/4/26/dont-conceal-this-debate.html">http://www.tomdelay.com/home/2007/4/26/dont-conceal-this-debate.html</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.</p>

Tom DeLay

2007-05-25

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5

eng

Letter from a VT Student

Today was by far the most trying day I&#39;ve experienced in my life. On April 16, 2007 33 people were killed, with 15 more wounded on the Virginia Tech Campus. I know that this is likely not new information, but I repeat it just to add strength to my message. There are not words to properly express just what feelings this day has brought. Surreal doesn&#39;t even begin to describe it. I&#39;ve spoken to more people on the phone today than I have in any day I can remember. The hours spent in the dorm just waiting and watching, seeing the events unfold and hearing the number of dead and wounded climb higher was the epitome of helplessness. This was a tragedy the likes of which have never been seen before, and hopefully will never be seen again. We heard it over and over again. The worst school shooting in US history, they said at first. Then, the worst mass murder in US history as the numbers climbed. Any attempt to convey the emotions and thoughts which barraged my mind today would be futile, vain, and ultimately trite. This was a dark day, near black as night.

That said, I have every confidence in this university and this community. I believe this town is capable of rising to the occasion and overcoming this monumental tragedy. I have no idea what the coming days and weeks hold in store, or even the slightest notion of what will happen as time transpires. There is no set procedure for handling something of this magnitude, by sheer virtue of the fact that it has never happened. In spite of that, I feel we, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, students, faculty and staff all, and the town of Blacksburg, are capable of bonding together to lift each other over this hurdle. We will pay our dues and respects to those deceased. We MUST pay our dues and our respects. Anything less would be a mark upon our record.

It is only then that we can hope to begin the rebuilding and healing process. It will be a long time before any student can step into Norris Hall without immediately drawing to mind thoughts of the events which occurred in that building today. I can only imagine what those who live on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall must feel now, and likely for nights to come, in regards to what transpired there as well. However, as time passes and we slowly heal, these things will become easier. And until that time, if we band together, teachers and students, all majors and classes, then we will be able to carry on our work as an academic institution. That is the best way we can hope to honor the memories of those murdered here for years to come. We must continue to learn, to advance the knowledge of our society and our species, that we may continue to understand the universe in all its parts. This applies not only to this university, but to every university in the United States and the world, present and future. I leave you all with one final plea from a freshman at this university, a plea echoed from every corner of this university by every student, faculty and staff member, all who witnessed this tragedy. I beg of you, on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, and for as long afterward as you may be convinced to do so, wear any maroon and orange you can find in remembrance of those innocents slain here. To borrow from several sources throughout the day, for the sake of those lost, put aside your allegiances and college ties for at least a short time. For today, we are all Hokies.

In most sincere regards and hope,
Mark Malloy
Virginia Tech Class of 2010

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<b>Author&#39;s Comments</b>

A letter to the world from me, a Virginia Tech student, regarding the events of April 16, 2007. Please spread this as far as you can.

Feel free to copy it and send it to people. If you have trouble doing that here, go to my xanga site, <a href="http://www.xanga.com/guitaristam73">[link]</a> for a copy. I&#39;d also like to thank everyone around the world who has been so supportive in this time. We are all Hokies, yesterday, today, and every day hence.

--

Original submitted to deviantart.com on April 19, 2007: <a href="http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53551291/">http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53551291/</a>

Mark Malloy

2007-05-24

Brent Jesiek

eng

VT Students turn to God

<p>Dr. Roger Passman</p>
<p>April 18, 2007</p>
<p>Reporting for <a href="http://tinyurl.com/35g965">Reuters</a>, Andrea Hopkins writes:</a></p>
<blockquote>By all accounts, the prayers started even before the gunshots stopped at Virginia Tech university, and the pleas to God from grief-stricken survivors of the massacre have continued ever since.</blockquote>
<blockquote>"God cares about Virginia Tech," said Megan Martin, 24, joining about a dozen fellow students in a traveling prayer vigil that rambled across the sprawling campus a day after the worst U.S. shooting spree in modern history.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Carrying placards reading: "Jesus loves you," "God knows and He cares," and "Can we pray with you?" the small knot of students worked their way through the university grounds in Blacksburg, a Bible Belt town in the mountains of southwest Virginia.</blockquote>
<p>I suppose turning to God(s) cannot do any serious harm to the individual that does the turning. The evidence, however, does not justify such a move. <i>"God cares about Virginia Tech," said Megan Martin</i>, is quoted in the article. Is this God so cruel that he (she, it) only cares after the fact? Is this God(s) so indifferent that he (she, it) only takes an interest after the dastardly deed has been accomplished? God knows and He cares, is another after the fact fantasy that may serve to salve heightened emotions but does not address the fundamental issue-was this God who cares so much simply on vacation when Cho Seung-Hui decided to engage on a shooting rampage on the VT campus? Does the evidence point to a God(s) who cares, who knows? I think not. What the evidence points to is a random series of events that occur every so often because Americans are willing to sacrifice security for the right to bear arms for any purpose whatsoever. The evidence does not point to a loving God(s) but, rather, to a heightened probability that because guns are so readily available in the United States tragic events such as the VT shootings are more likely than not to occur.</p>
<p>While turning to God(s) is a defensive move in cases of unthinkable tragedy for many people, it seems to me that it is simply a misplaced use of human energy. Telling one&#39;s self that God(s) really care, while that might have a temporary calming effect, does nothing to solve the problem that lies at the root of the VT shootings. Far more productive an approach is to focus the anger and frustration one feels in moments of unspeakable tragedy into efforts to place meaningful regulation on the ownership of weapons that have no other use than to cause permanent harm to those to whom the guns are directed. Gun nuts that demand no regulation of weapons spouting rights granted under the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States <i>(A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,)</i> must ask: <b>to what militia did Cho Seung-Hui belong</b> when he began his rampage? Why was Cho Seung-Hui permitted to purchase and own guns? Why do we put up with this cowboy mentality? Is life really imitating the wild west shootout of the movies?</p>
<p>Rather than turning to God(s) how about turning to Congress and demanding that your lawmakers do something to prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again. If you don&#39;t then, it seems to me, that events like the VT shootings will surely occur over and over, again and again. One Italian journalist wrote that the VT shootings are as American as apple pie. It this the image America and Americans portray to the world? Is this the image we want to portray? It is time to stop the madness.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://rpassman.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/vt-students-turn-to-god/">http://rpassman.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/vt-students-turn-to-god/</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States</a>.</p>

Roger Passman

2007-05-24

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States

eng

Virginia Tech: It's Not About Gun Control, and You're a Fool or a Monster If You Say It Is

Apr. 18th, 2007 at 12:02 AM

Virginia is, if memory serves, one of the states that had a particularly malevolently horrible 2004 national election, one marked by substantial Republican chicanery and vicious suppression of the minority vote, so the last thing on earth that I could ever have imagined myself doing was cheering for Virginia&#39;s Republican governor, Tim Kaine. But Tuesday afternoon I not only cheered out loud over something he said, I was so glad he said it that I was waving my fist over my head and very nearly jumped out of my chair. And it wasn&#39;t just what he said, but how he said it; I wish I could find a way to show it to you. But at the end of the Tuesday press conference, some sleazebag in the audience, knowing how pro-gun Kaine is, tossed him what he probably thought was a softball question, namely, did the governor think that some of the deaths could have been averted if Virginia Polytechnic students had been allowed to carry concealed firearms on campus? Instead of the reaction the so-called "reporter" was expecting, what happened was that governor Kaine&#39;s face twisted up as if he had bitten into a bug. And with disgust dripping from his voice, he said something to the effect that the only response he had to anybody who would try to use this tragedy to make any kind of a point about gun control was "total loathing."

And he&#39;s right. So I don&#39;t feel good that I&#39;ve let some of you prod me into having to defend my statement from last night that neither more guns on campus, nor fewer guns, would have made things any better. That some of y&#39;all are sliming up this horrible but essentially random tragedy, that some of you are dragging your muddy political bootprints all over this while the corpses aren&#39;t even yet in the ground, that so many of you are so sick as to seek to twist this massacre into proof that your side should win in the literally pointless debate over gun control before even one family can bury their dead in peace, both sickens me and lowers my opinion of some of you. It lowers my opinion of your collective intelligence, too, because both arguments are so trivially disposed of that I&#39;m having to struggle to maintain my faith in your sincerity -- or even your basic decency, your humanity. If you&#39;re one of the people who&#39;s been doing so, whether pro-gun or anti-gun, you should be ashamed of yourself.

<b>Fewer Guns Wouldn&#39;t Have Prevented the Massacre.</b> I&#39;d like to thank <a href="http://xiphias.livejournal.com/">xiphias</a> for being the first to point out to me, in the replies to somebody else&#39;s journal posting, that while the Virginia Tech massacre is the worst school shooting in American history, it is only the second worst school massacre. The worst school massacre in American history was in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster">Bath Township, Michigan</a>, and its murderer used no guns at all, but instead a pair of bombs. It was in 1927, before the Depression even really began, when a farmer about to lose his farm because of rising property taxes decided to vent his wrath on the community by destroying the public building they were taking his farm to pay off, the local school. With the students still in it. He then waited at the scene, and made history as the first ever suicide car bomber, blowing up the first wave of would-be rescuers who rushed to the scene.

This is probably also a good time to remind you that it is, perhaps, a good thing that Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold had guns. They had not planned to shoot up Columbine High School. They had planned to level it, and to that end had planted two ill-designed propane bombs. Their original plan was to use the guns only to pick off any survivors of the blast that escaped the rubble, before killing each other. Had they not had guns, they might have come back another day with better bombs instead of wandering around shooting at random, and the death toll would probably have been substantially higher. I know that Seung Cho didn&#39;t do anything at Virginia Tech on Monday that he couldn&#39;t have done just as easily and even more effectively with a machete or a good kitchen knife and a couple of ordinary pipe bombs.

England&#39;s got pretty strict gun control, you know. During the Troubles, this caused neither the Irish Republican Army nor the Ulster militias any difficulty whatsoever whenever they got the urge to slaughter a large number of people in British-occupied Ireland, either. Oh, once in a rare while they used guns smuggled to them (depending on which side they were on) either from the British army or from sympathizers here in the US. But more often, they used explosives. It&#39;s also worth pointing out that, since we destroyed their government, Iraqis have had a Virginia-Tech-sized school massacre at least once a month for the last four years. Even though the Iraqi people are some of the most heavily armed in the world, even more heavily armed than your average American, none of their school massacres have involved guns, either. When al Qaeda wants to slaughter high school or college students, they use suicide bombers, just like at Bath Township, just like the Columbine killers tried to do. For that matter, when Timothy McVeigh decided to slaughter a ton of federal employees in Oklahoma City in revenge for the Waco massacre, he didn&#39;t need any guns to do it, either, remember? Just some ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a couple of barrels of diesel fuel, and a few blasting caps.

Throughout history, we&#39;ve been lucky when the sickos take up guns rather than bombs; the bombers were the ones that produced the truly horrific death tolls. So you should count yourself lucky that Seung Cho had decided to buy two handguns when he was indulging his violent fantasies to himself over the last month or so, one of them a weeny little .22 that he probably didn&#39;t manage to kill anybody with, rather than the dynamite or pipe bombs or other improvised explosive devices he might have bought or built if he hadn&#39;t had guns.

<b>More Guns Wouldn&#39;t Have Prevented the Massacre, Either.</b> I grant that this case is a little harder to make, but the only reason that this isn&#39;t obvious is that too many of you have failed to think through what would have happened if some armed student had tried to use his own handgun to overpower Seung Cho. So let&#39;s roll back the clock to Monday morning, or roll it forward to the next school shooting, and pit Rampaging Killer against some hypothetical John Q. Student, both of them armed with handguns. It&#39;s 9:45 on a Monday morning, and it has slowly dawned on John that that banging noise down the hall isn&#39;t construction, but some guy with a gun and a ton of ammunition working his way from classroom to classroom. Or maybe John gets a text message on his phone from someone who tells him that there&#39;s a pistol-wielding maniac in a bullet-proof vest full of ammo heading his way. John, being a responsible type, draws his weapon, pulls the firing pin out of his wallet and resets it, removes the safety, chambers a round, and somehow miraculously gets this all done in time to draw a careful bead on the door, waiting for Rampaging Killer to enter. We will even give him the unlikely credit for having thought to look for the flak jacket and the gun, so he doesn&#39;t accidentally shoot any of his fellow students who are fleeing from the shooter into this room. So the door bangs open, and John Q. Student sees a flak jacket and a gun, and then one of only three possible things happens:

1. Remember that John Q. Student has not just spent the whole morning practicing shooting at real human beings. On the contrary, shooting at an actual human being is something that he&#39;s never done before. In fact, the odds against his having ever fired a pistol at any moving target are astronomical. Also, we know that John Q. Student has at least some humanitarian impulse, at least some urge to not shoot at people. I say this because, frankly, if he&#39;s been carrying this gun with him everywhere he goes for long enough that he happened to have it on him when he needed it, if he didn&#39;t have that hesitation to shoot another person, he would have shot somebody by now and would be in jail, not in a classroom waiting for Rampaging Killer. So I flatly guarantee you that he shoots late, and that he jerks the weapon when he shoots as his body reflexively tries to stop him from shooting someone, and the round goes completely wild. How can I guarantee this? Because this situation has come up over and over again since the invention of the gun, and it is what everybody except for a few combat veterans has done, the first time that they&#39;ve fired a gun at a criminal. And that&#39;s if he fires the gun at all. In example after example, we have seen that what John Q. Student is much more likely to do is the stupidest thing he could possibly do: shout "drop the weapon" or yell "stop or I&#39;ll shoot" or fire a warning shot, wanting to give Rampaging Killer a chance to surrender. All that this achieves is to tell Rampaging Killer, now a practiced shooter, exactly where to aim. If Rampaging Killer hadn&#39;t made up his mind whether or not to shoot up this particular room, he does now, starting with emptying his clip at John and thereby gunning down everybody between John and the wall behind him, and everybody for three feet on either side.

2. Or else, when John Q. Student sees a flak jacket and a gun come through that door, he&#39;s thought of this possibility. Or maybe he&#39;s a combat veteran himself. So knowing better than to try to get Rampaging Killer to not shoot, he immediately opens fire the instant he has a target, and let&#39;s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he shoots improbably accurately. Only guess what? More doors were banged open by the SWAT team, who covered more of the building looking for Rampaging Killer, than were banged open by Rampaging Killer. So the odds are that John Q. Student shoots Officer Friendly, and now we have at least one more corpse. And at least one more killer.

3. Or else maybe this particular John Q. Student is a combat veteran, and an Olympic quality pistol shot, and has faster reflexes than your average Olympic athlete and thinks faster and more clearly than any college aged student you&#39;ve ever met in your life or that you ever will. So in the 1/10th of a second between when the flak jacket and gun crash through that door and when he would need to pull the trigger, he recognizes Officer Friendly&#39;s police uniform, and therefore holds his fire. Officer Friendly makes his combat entry into the room, sweeping his weapon across it in a practiced move, knowing that if Rampaging Killer is in the room and waiting for him then he absolutely must get a shot into Rampaging Killer fast or he&#39;s going to die. Officer Friendly sees John Q. Student&#39;s gun barrel, mistakes John Q. Student for Rampaging Killer, and empties an assault rifle into the area where John Q. Student is sitting, killing John, everybody within 3 feet either side of him, and everybody behind him for at least two rooms. Alas, Rampaging Killer was two floors away. Now we have an entire roomful of more victims.

No other outcome is even vaguely humanly possible. Frankly, if he had any impulse to fight the Rampaging Killer rather than to jump out a window or bar the door, John Q. Student would have been safer and just as effective if he had used his bare hands.

And to again draw the parallel to Iraq, I&#39;ve read that virtually every adult male Iraqi owns an assault rifle, and has since long before Saddam was overthrown. If "more guns" are the solution to school violence, then why are the Iraqis having at least one Virginia-Tech-sized school massacre every month?

<b>So What Are the Politicians Supposed to Do?</b> Voters in a democracy are prone to an obnoxious fault: when something truly awful happens, they demand that every elected official do something about it, right now. It doesn&#39;t matter whether or not there is anything that elected official can do that would be at all useful. All that matters is that the voters see every politician prove that he or she cares about the same things the voters care about by doing something, however futile or counter-productive. So in a way, while it&#39;s sick and tragic and pointless and futile and stupid and inhumane to the families of the victims that we&#39;re having a gun control argument now, I suppose it is sadly inevitable. So what do I think the politicians should do to prevent the next massacre like the one at Virginia Tech instead of arguing about gun control? Nothing. Let&#39;s face facts. One third of the nation is mentally ill. Of that hundred million people, there are probably at least 10,000 who are sick, twisted loners who are total losers with their preferred sex, prone to stalkerish behavior, and altogether too fond of really sick violent imagery. Heck, I&#39;ve known at least two of them personally. Every eight years or so, one of those 10,000 people goes off. And there is still no way to predict which of those 10,000 people are going to go off, and no way to coral or herd or manage or contain or even disarm those 10,000 sickos without setting even more of them off than already go off.

Learn elementary first aid, practice building evacuations, live a good and loving and full life, and if you have dependents pay your life insurance. Not because every eight years or so you have a one in 10,000,000 chance of being the victim of a rampaging mass murderer, but because you run a much higher probability of at least once in your life of being involved in some kind of random disaster, whether from dangerous weather, or other natural disaster, or a building fire, or an act of war, or any of a long long list of things that can go wrong in this life. Sometimes death just comes at random. Sometimes there just isn&#39;t anything useful we can do about that other than to do what you political carrion eaters aren&#39;t allowing us to quietly do instead of getting dragged into your pointless argument, and that&#39;s to comfort the survivors and rebuild.

* Mood: aggravated

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Original Source: <a href="http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/328865.html">http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/328865.html</a>

licensed under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

J. Brad Hicks

2007-05-24

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 2.5

eng

News Coverage of the VA tech Shooting

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Topics like these are always hard to approach. For some, the event holds particular weight, either because of their relationship with the victims, with the assailant, with the location where it takes place, or because of the events relationship with another similar incident.

The coverage of these events is usually the same. To provide the viewer with context- there is footage of the location from every possible angle, there are reporter stand-ups near the location providing a feeling of being well informed by the people "on the scene", there is video from security cams or other sources that allow an inside view of the event or of the lead up to it, and there is commentary, lots of commentary.

In these ways, as is the case with much of news today, the coverage of such events can be compared to the coverage of a sporting event: Heavy on filler, and light on actual content. As of today, it&#39;s been almost a week since the incident, and coverage of the shooting takes up a giant share of the programming schedules of networks. With less that four or five (if that) big stories running at the same time, it is in the forefront of the news audiences mind.

Like most tragedies, answers are what are sought after most, that and blame. And this is what takes up most of the coverage. There are investigations into the profile of the assailant, interviews by "experts" in the field, with witnesses, with family, with victims of other similar tragedies, with law enforcement, with neighbors, ad <b>nauseam</b>.

We watch all of this and assume that somehow there can be meaning found once all the pieces are known. That if enough time is spent on it, answers will be found, that proper blame will be placed, justice will be served. This is a false hope.

Tragedies like these happen all the time. Not all of them are covered. Not all of them are given the weight that The Virginia Tech Shooting has been given. This is not to belittle the severity of the situation, nor is it to undermine the pain that resonates from the news of such an event, or the loss of the survivors. What should be looked at however is how these events are covered in the news, and how it affects our understanding of them as a viewer.

The news media does a great job of drawing connections between events in order to apply meaning. This event is connected with the Columbine shooting, as it is also a mass shooting in a school. Connections are drawn between the fear of terrorism, and the fear of an unexpected terror. The words "Terror", and "Terrorist" are thrown around wantonly. Particular weight is given to the assailant&#39;s status as an American, drawing further connections to the fears of an attack by a foreigner. It is put into the temporal context as being "the deadliest shooting in American History" or it is given by some news agencies even more gravity by being called a "Massacre", a "deadly rampage". What does it mean to be the "Deadliest", is the loss of ten victims more profound then thirty, or one? How many victims are required for it to be counted as a massacre? Are there particular characteristics that make a shooting a rampage, instead of a methodical series of executions? There is no litmus test for tragedy outside of personal experience.

These titles are nothing more than advertising slogans and marketing catch phrases. They are designed to draw the audience in, to get them to pay closer attention to the coverage of one report over another, to boost viewer-ship and ratings. To help fill this content, the lions share of programming time is given to interviews with the "experts", the press conference, and news releases after the fact. Officials stand in front of a dozen microphones twice a day, stating that they have "no further information at this time" and "those questions can&#39;t be answered during an ongoing investigation". But some news outlets are quick to point fingers. To cast blame. Somehow talk show celebrities like Dr. Phil are considered experts into the mind of a killer by CNN, and is constantly referred to in order to gain insight into how this could happen, when in reality his role is one of familiarity. Dr. Phil is placed in front of the camera to draw in the viewer ship of his entire constituency. For countless American viewers, he is a trusted face that could help bring meaning to such an event.

Witnesses are interviewed hours after the event. "How does it feel to be one of the only survivors?", "How did you escape?", "How does this affect you? These questions, while apparently directed to the witness, are really directed to the audience placing themselves in the survivor&#39;s shoes. "How would I handle this?" is the question. How can I learn from this? The reporter leans in and asks the obvious- "have you talked to anybody about this yet, are you seeking professional help?" Obviously not yet, they are in front of the camera. They are prevented from recovery so that the audience can gain catharsis and false closure instead.

What is missed in all this is that we are all being exploited in some way in order to boost ratings and sell advertising space. The coverage is excessive, bordering on irresponsible. People are pulled out of the woodwork, their lives interrupted so that we can know what it was like to be in elementary school with someone who grows up to be a killer. We see a mother of a child who murdered dozens and then killed himself, and wonder why she is stunned and despondent. We "talk" to "experts" who say this is a gun control issue, that everyone should be armed. We hear from security experts who say it&#39;s because of a lack of police and security presence, and other similar people who are pushing their own agenda, not helping to inform on the subject.

The audience wants to know what is happening out there. They want to know when they should be legitimately worried about something, and this is what they get instead; hyperbole, speculation, grandstanding and sensationalism.

One particular interview strikes a nerve. A criminologist was being interviewed on a major network, and was asked how this could happen. Is it video game violence, easy access to guns, copycat crimes, bad parenting? The criminologist dismissed these easy scapegoats and answered in the only rational way anyone could. He said, that it is a combination of factors. Not every one is predisposed to criminal behavior like this, but under the wrong conditions an unstable mind can be pushed to commit horrendous things.

The real problem is that the system is such that someone this unstable could slip through the cracks and not get the care and attention that they need to heal. The problem is the focus on violence in media after the fact, not before it happens. The problem is a society who would sooner cast blame on others than take care of their own, or that would blame lax immigration laws that would allow for someone like this to get into the country, instead of diligently pushing for a system where those with emotional and mental problems get help. But ultimately the problem is that no real meaning can be found in a situation like this. No matter how many laws are in place, or police are around, or security checkpoints we have, a troubled mind left unchecked, will find a way to follow through with their plan. The news agencies and the commentators will be standing by, ready to add their opinion to the pile, without ever providing solutions to the core societal problems that allow tragedies to unfold. The sound-bytes will search for meaning in a meaningless action. The viewer will tune in to try and add meaning to their understanding of the situation, drawing from the only resources that they have. The advertisers will reap the rewards of our attention.

Change must take place in the way these types of things are covered in the news so that people can help to identify those that need our help before extremes of desperation are reached. A change in the way we look at tragedy must take place before meaning can be found. Tragedy and our fear of it must not be exploited for the profit by the news. We as the audience must demand more than empty rhetoric and facile coverage and questioning, bold red headlines and somber musical montages of mourners. We must demand more, of ourselves and of the news.

Posted by nickdigital2.0 at 5:01 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://alifelessmediated.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-coverage-of-va-tech-shooting.html">http://alifelessmediated.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-coverage-of-va-tech-shooting.html</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License</a>.

Nicholas Whitaker

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License

eng

On the Ethics of Bad News

[This is a copy of my initial reaction to the media coverage of the VTech shooting, posted on my Wordpress blog. Unfortunately both links are now defunct - I wish I had saved a page of the "godblessvtech" blog, because it was to me a poignant illustration of the possibilities of the Internet for creating and reaffirming community. At the same time, however, I was disgusted by CNN&#39;s use of digital media - particularly video - to create what I saw as a voyeuristic experience of the event.]

"On the Ethics of Bad News"
Posted April 16, 2007
<a href="http://zozer319.wordpress.com/">http://zozer319.wordpress.com/</a>

I didn&#39;t really hear about this until late tonight, partly because all the people working out around me at the gym with TVs had them on stupid MTV the whole time.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you all two remarkable (for very different reasons) things I found online when doing a search for some overview of the shooting. I send them in particular because they are both temporary postings but say an awful lot:

First, a striking example of a good use of the Internet, not only to share information but as a sense of non-physical community. I found this blog (probably just set up today, for this purpose only, so not actually a blog per se) on Wordpress - it&#39;s just a list of names and people asking for information on whether the individuals listed are okay.

<a href="http://godblessvtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/">http://godblessvtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/</a>

Scroll down to read the progression of the information gathering and messages left. Also note the amount of information gleaned from Facebook.

Second, a striking example of outright voyeurism disguised as comprehensive journalistic coverage. In browsing CNN&#39;s coverage of the story, I was disgusted by the amount of video - not of interviews and re-runs of news stories, but the amount of direct footage of the shootings/events themselves;

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html</a>

There is no clear line between information and too much information, but that might be close. Thank goodness I wasn&#39;t watching CNN today, or I probably would have got pissed off at them a lot sooner than now (not that it&#39;s just them... but if they bill themselves as the world&#39;s #1 news source I hope it&#39;s not too much to ask to hold them to some minimum standard).

Anyway, that&#39;s all I&#39;ve got. And get ready to hear about this one for weeks (not from me - from "The Media.")

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Original Source: <a href="http://zozer319.wordpress.com/2007/04/">http://zozer319.wordpress.com/2007/04/</a>

Anna Brawley

2007-05-23

Anna Brawley

eng

We Need Emergency SMS Broadcasting Tools NOW!

<p>April 16, 2007</p>
<p>It&#39;s been a dizzying day taking in the horrible news from Virginia Tech, just a few hours west of DC, with at least 30 people on campus killed by a lone gunman. I spent a good part of the morning running back and forth between NPR&#39;s digital media department, the offices of Talk of the Nation, and the central hub space shared by NPR&#39;s news team during emergencies.</p>
<p>Now that I&#39;ve had a chance to sit on the train, head back home from work, and think about what happened today, I&#39;m already angered by one bit of news I hadn&#39;t considered earlier in the day: that approximately two hours passed between the first shooting incident and the later massacre in the classrooms. During that time, it appears that almost no communications went out, apart from several mass email informing students of a shooting incident earlier in the day. The first email went out just before 9:30am, just after the final shootings began in the classrooms:</p>
<blockquote>Subject: Shooting on campus.

"A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.

"The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at 231-6411

"Stay attuned to the http://www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information."</blockquote>
<p>This was followed by several other emails:</p>
<blockquote>Second email sent at 9:50 a.m.:

Subject: PLease stay put

"A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows"

Third email sent at 10:17 a.m.:

Subject: All Classes Canceled; Stay where you are

"Virginia Tech has canceled all classes. Those on campus are asked to remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus."

Fourth email sent at 10:53 a.m.:

Subject: Second Shooting Reported; Police have one gunman in custody

"In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.

"Police and EMS are on the scene.

"Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.

"All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.

"All entrances to campus are closed."</blockquote>
<p>If the gunman was at large, why on earth wasn&#39;t the campus in lock-down mode sooner? Why didn&#39;t they have any other form of mass broadcast, apart from the campus-wide email?</p>
<p>At minimum, the campus should have had an emergency PA system. I don&#39;t care if you want to use shootings or tornados or any other excuse for making the investment, but every campus in America should have a basic PA system for any potential civic emergency.</p>
<p>And I know I&#39;ve said this each time a disaster has happened over the last couple of years, but why the hell don&#39;t we have an emergency SMS broadcasting tool that can be used to send warnings to every cell phone in a given area or to a given group? Please don&#39;t take this as yet another pitch for people to use Twitter or Jaiku or Mozes, because frankly I don&#39;t care what tool people use, as long as it&#39;s reliable, easy to manage and secure - and Twitter doesn&#39;t exactly meet those needs yet. It&#39;s a start, but there&#39;s a long way to go.</p>
<p>Back during the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Swedish government was able to get the local phone companies to send an SMS broadcast to every one of their subscribers whose phones had recently sent out a signal emanating from Southeast Asia. While they weren&#39;t able to do it in time to save lives, it made a major difference in tracking down who survived and who didn&#39;t. If they&#39;re able to figure out a way to do that, why can&#39;t we figure out a way to allow schools and municipalities here in the US to send out emergency SMS broadcasts? There&#39;s no way I can know for sure, of course, but I would surmise that almost every student and faculty member injured or killed today had a cell phone on them when they were attacked. Imagine the difference a single text message could have made.</p>
<p>We can wait and see if some dot-com company can come up with a tool that could be jury-rigged for such purposes. Or we could get off our asses and make the necessary investments to develop an serious SMS broadcasting tool specifically designed for emergencies, both for warning the public and coordinating first responders. How many more disasters will it take before we do take the necessary action? -andy</p>
<p>Posted by acarvin at April 16, 2007 6:33 PM</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original source: <a href="http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2007/04/we_need_emergency_sms_broadcasting_tools.html">http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2007/04/we_need_emergency_sms_broadcasting_tools.html</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0</a></p>

Andy Carvin

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

eng