I am gonna be the one who has post anything about the godamned massacre at virginia tech. It has to be me?

Anyways

Blacksburg Virginia Technical school

32 people died

28 injured

AZN responsible.

biggest massacre in the ?

vtech just kicked in yo

I really don't know what to say. It's fucked up on so many levels. I wish there was something I could say.

People die every day.

The shooter will be punished if they catch him.

Virginia is nowhere near me.

In summary:  who cares?

PS  What's an AZN?

One: you're a moron

Two: The guy offed himself

Three: Asian is AZN dumbass

Four: ?????

Four: Profit!

I'm curious to know if these people, when going on a shooting rampage, strive to break the 'number of people killed' record. It's horrible to think that this is yet another trophy for people to aim for.

There have already been at least two "copycats" today alone. Threats, anyway, I don't think they found anyone with a weapon. This actually scares the beejeezus out of me. It's really sad. There's nothing more any of us can say than it's really sad.

There is, however, a fund set up if anyone feels like they might want to donate. You can find that here: http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php

I know I'll be evaluating my next paycheck.

DARKWING DUCK COULD HAVE SAVED THOSE PEOPLE, BUT WAS TOO BUSY MAKING COMICS ON THE INTERNET!

some superhero you are

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xxausrottenxx wrote:
some superhero you are

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I can't be EVERYWHERE!

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gabe_billings wrote:
I'm curious to know if these people, when going on a shooting rampage, strive to break the 'number of people killed' record. It's horrible to think that this is yet another trophy for people to aim for.

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That's exactly the point that one psychologist made on one of the news programs last night.  The media needs to stop making such a point of proclaiming these shootings as some sort of 'record' because someone else who's just as wacked-out as this Virginia guy will make it a point to break that record.

Oh, and who wants to make bets as to how long will it take before someone blames this whole thing on video games?

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TheBlairZip wrote:

Oh, and who wants to make bets as to how long will it take before someone blames this whole thing on video games?

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Jack Thompson's already done it.

God that guy is scum.

Say, what game were they playing that gave them the crazy idea to launch the Crusades?

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gabe_billings wrote:
Say, what game were they playing that gave them the crazy idea to launch the Crusades?

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Dynamite Headdy.

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TheBlairZip wrote:

That's exactly the point that one psychologist made on one of the news programs last night.  The media needs to stop making such a point of proclaiming these shootings as some sort of 'record' because someone else who's just as wacked-out as this Virginia guy will make it a point to break that record.

Oh, and who wants to make bets as to how long will it take before someone blames this whole thing on video games?

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If you can blame the media for reporting stuff like this in a certain way, then you can blame video games.  The argument is the same:  making it seem like you're getting points for killing people.  Personally, I don't think you can blame either one; people have to be not-stupid enough to know the difference between reality and play. Also between records worth breaking and records not worth breaking.

I agree that the argument is the same.  And I don't think any one is blaming the media for what happened Monday.  Just pointing out that you don't want to make the idea of 'going for kill points' any more inticing to some other sicko than it may already be.  Yes, it is a horrible tragedy, but don't overshadow the tragegy itself by making the point of it "Worst Killing Spree Ever!" or "Highest Body Count Ever!"

My point being, if some fucked-up lunatic pulls a copycat, ends up killing 34 people, and does it purely for bragging rights, then the media could partially be blamed.  This still does not excuse the fact that said individual is a fucked-up lunatic.

However, as of now, there's no indication that video games had anything to do with the motivations, strategery or implemenation of this heinous crime.  Therefore, Jack Thompson should immediately go stuff himself into a barrell full of diseased scorpions and take a plunge down Niagra Falls.

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TheBlairZip wrote:
Therefore, Jack Thompson should immediately go stuff himself into a barrell full of diseased scorpions and take a plunge down Niagra Falls.

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I think all those people jumping in front of bullets to beat 50 cent's hight score of nine shots survived is outragious! I believe much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the video game Bulletproof.

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The_young_scot wrote:

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TheBlairZip wrote:

Oh, and who wants to make bets as to how long will it take before someone blames this whole thing on video games?

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Jack Thompson's already done it.

 

God that guy is scum.

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Chu Chu Rocket is corrupting the youth of America!

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TheBlairZip wrote:

My point being, if some fucked-up lunatic pulls a copycat, ends up killing 34 people, and does it purely for bragging rights, then the media could partially be blamed. 

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No.  People are constantly bombarded with information of all sorts.  It's their responsibility to sort it out and not be idiots.  It's media's reponsibility is to sell copy / time / ads; thus the extreme headlines.

Everyone wants to blame everyone else these days.  South Korea fucking apologized for this kid.  How the hell was it Korea's fault?  But still, they felt compelled to say something.  There probably would've been some sort of uproar if they didn't.  This is the world we live in.

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TheBlairZip wrote:

However, as of now, there's no indication that video games had anything to do with the motivations, strategery or implemenation of this heinous crime. 

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Well the kid was South Korean, right?  That's pretty much the highest per capita video game fanaticism per capita in the world.  Still no excuse, though.

I've read everything that's out there on this case, and it seems to me: 1. that a person's first impulse is usually to say that so-and-so should have done such-and-such to stop the guy before he popped off, and 2. in this case, many people did everything they were supposed to do when encountering a wackjob, and it didn't stop this guy. I think the dude was broken, and nothing but a bullet would stop him.

Given the circumstances, I can think of only two conditions that would have prevented the rampage or mitigated the death toll, and neither of them is nice. One is if someone had crippled or killed him in the course of his woman-stalking career. The other is if more good people at VT were carrying handguns, and one of them had been in a position to put a bullet in this creep's brain before he used up all his ammo on innocent people. Again, living in an armed vigilante camp is not at the top of most people's wish list, but I can't think of anything else that would have stopped him.

The good news is that your chances of encountering a calculating sociopath on a killing spree are vanishingly remote. The bad news is, if you're a nice, law-abiding citizen, and it does happen, you're almost certainly toast.

I think almost everyone, myself included, is in profound denial of this fact. That's why we like to say someone should have done something. More gun control, less gun control, more therapy, less coddling, blah blah blah. To keep my sanity during the ensuing months, I'm concentrating on remembering that it's all bullshit, all of it, sheer vanity. We just like to think we're in control of our lives, but this is like having a truck crash into your living room while you're watching TV: In the unlikely event that it happens, you are fucked. Nobody likes it, but that's how it is.

Which is a good reason to be nice to people and say your prayers every day, or whatever it is you'd do if there were your last moments on Earth, because they just might be.

This is the first comic I've made in a long time and it's not an indication of my writer's block clearing. It's an actual news interview I watched while getting ready to go to work this morning.

390271

I'm not here to get into a great big discussion about gun laws or the United States Constitution. I just wanted it preserved.

Each side of the gun argument will ridicule the other, but the truth is, neither side is ridiculous. Both sides have a point. It's not an easy issue. And none of us wants to start in on the gun debate, but hey, since someone brought it up...

I should be clear that I don't mean that more handguns on campus is necessarily a desirable thing, only that an armed person might have stopped the fucker before he killed all those people. Sure, Virginia might enact more laws further restricting the purchase and possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens, but the fact is, existing laws already prohibited possession of firearms on campus. The thing that sticks in a lot of people's craws is that the victims of this slaughter respected the State's gun laws and so were unarmed. The murderer, by definition, did not. Therefore, the law's only practical effect in this case was to make lawful persons defenseless and enable the criminal to execute them by the tens without fear of being stopped.

With tighter laws, this would still have been the case, only more so. To a proponent of the right to self-defense, legislating more gun control only makes the existing problem worse. Jokes notwithstanding, there is absolutely nothing stupid or ridiculous about this position. It just assumes a different problem. Gun control advocates assume that the problem is that people have guns. Self-defense advocates propose that the real problem is that only the wrong people have guns.

I don't know who's right because I don't know if more guns among law-abiding citizens means more gun crime because of poor impulse control, which I think is ultimately what the gun-grabbers are saying. It sort of sounds reasonable, but as far as I can tell, it's not borne out by any empirical study. The point is I don't know, and they don't either, and while we're arguing about it, many people in many places are just sitting ducks for any homicidal asshole who happens not to give a fuck about gun laws. That seems wrong to a lot of people who have thought very hard about the matter.

I would tend to default on the side of individual rights until the state can show strong evidence of a compelling community interest in diminishing those rights. Haven't seen it yet. But I don't take a hard-line stance either way, and like Kajun, I don't really want to have a completely unwinnable debate here. I just want to recognize that both sides have a point before we start making cartoons of each other and mistaking them for reality.

But we can all agree that Jack Thompson is a cunt, right?

An afterthought: Even in the most draconian anti-gun jurisdictions, it is the case that the judges, prosecutors, and usually (if not always) legislators enacting and enforcing these restrictions retain the right to carry a firearm, and the majority do not hesitate to exercise that right. So while they say the problem is that people have guns, in practice they agree with the gun rights advocates: The problem really is that the wrong people have guns. What judges, prosecutors, and legislators generally mean when they say people shouldn't have guns is that you and I shouldn't have them, but they should. And that is both hypocrisy and elitism bordering on outright oligarchy.

I have to admit that deep down, I am a big hypocrite too, and my ideal gun control policy would be that nobody but me and my friends and our hirelings would ever be trusted with something so dangerous as a handgun. I mean deep down, we're probably all like these judges, prosecutors, and lawmakers who espouse gun control while packing heat or hiring armed guards. We would all like to go through life with such an advantage, but that doesn't make it a good policy. In fact, it smacks of tyranny.

I used to be very staunchly in favor of outlawing handguns until I took the time to consider such views.

PS: It is so abundantly clear that Jack Thompson is a cunt that there can hardly be any opposing viewpoint to acknowledge.

Damn, I meant to restrict what I said to officials to the USA. In other countries, it may not apply at all, but it applies here for sure. I will stop posting for a minute now.

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not_Scyess wrote:

People are constantly bombarded with information of all sorts.  It's their responsibility to sort it out and not be idiots.

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Which is exactly what I meant by the other part of that statement:  "This still does not excuse the fact that said individual is a fucked-up lunatic."

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not_Scyess wrote:

Well the kid was South Korean, right?  That's pretty much the highest per capita video game fanaticism per capita in the world.  Still no excuse, though.

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He was born there, but he's been in the States since age 8.  I don't know why the hell South Korea would apologize, nor do I think anyone would expect them to.

I just want to make it clear that I am not blaming anyone for what happened at Virginia Tech except the fucker who snapped and went on the shooting spree.  It was his choice and his choice alone to kill all of those innocent victims.  Boo is absolutly right - nothing would have stopped him from carrying out this attack.

There will never be a form of gun control in this country that will please everyone.  So own all the guns you want, just please don't shoot me with them.

Jack Thompson is, indeed, a cunt.

And I would also like to point out the continually wonderful irony that is 'Ads by Google':

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TheBlairZip wrote:
Boo is absolutly right - nothing would have stopped him from carrying out this attack.

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Well, nothing would have stopped him-- except getting an especially vicious stomping while he went about stalking those women, or getting shot by a witness or target of his attack. But the law defines anyone prepared to implement either measure as a criminal, and I'm not entirely sure the law is wrong. And as you say, something like this could happen no matter how you rigged the law.

The Google Ad for guns appearing over Kajun's comics is far and away the best thing that is going to happen in this thread.

if everyone in the classroom had been similarily armed, he might have got 5 or 10 people before someone painted the wall with his brains.

i've never been a pro gun control guy, i feel that only makes it harder for normal citizens to obtain guns whereas it just makes it slightly more exspensive for criminals to get them.       

its incredibly sad that these things occur in our society and everytime similar shootings happen i can't help but think that if more people were armed, these fucking pieces of filth who commit this sort of crime might be more hesitant to do them in a best case scenario.

worst case scenario they happen anyway but with lower death tolls. 

who knows? just my opinion. my heart goes out to the families who lost a loved one in that senseless act                          

So how do you feel about portable ion cannons?

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boorite wrote:

The Google Ad for guns appearing over Kajun's comics is far and away the best thing that is going to happen in this thread.

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I predict that this is the second truest thing that has been said, and will be said on this thread.

The first most true thing of course being that Jack Thompson is a cunt.

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boorite wrote:
I used to be very staunchly in favor of outlawing handguns until I took the time to consider such views.

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I'm the grandson of a gun collector, yet we never had any guns in our house because my mom didn't like them. I was also a staunch gun control advocate until I went out shooting with three roommates who also happened to be cops. I had so much fun with their arsenal, I eventually bought two handguns just for the fun of it (and also to take out Kajun if he ever comes at me with a knife).

Now down to business.

I'm in charge of emergency planning for a school district and I spend a lot of time working on our crisis management plans and training staff on what to do if something like this happened. I'm also working on a federal grant to beef up our preparedness and communications to deal with these types of situations. I thought this morning that it was only a matter of time until these Columbine style incidents (the 8 year anniversary of that is Friday, btw) hit college campuses. From what I can see, universities have a long way to go to develop plans and relationships with law enforcement that K-12 schools have had to put into place for years.

I'll fight the urge to second guess what the university and police did wrong...when the dust settles, the state of VA will commission a multi-disciplinary review of the incident and the report will be the framework for university active shooter response.

So who the hell is Jack Thompson?

As twisted as my sense of humour might be, I still can't fathom just how screwed up someone would have to be to do something like this. 11 years might have passed, but Port Arthur still stings like it was yesterday.

My sympathies go out to the friends and families of the victims.

The gun control debate is one I try to avoid because -- like how to get out of Iraq -- there seems to be no right answer.  However, I doubt the carnage would've been any less if everyone else on campus had been armed.  Having a gun doesn't make you bullet proof.  And a campus-wide shootout doesn't do much to reduce the body count.

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gabe_billings wrote:
So how do you feel about portable ion cannons?

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I prefer the BFG 9000.  It's and oldie but a goodie.

And who the fuck IS Jack Thompson?  (Besides a cunt.)

You know, it's intelligent and thought provoking threads about important world issues like this that detract from the more important subjects like donkey fucking and robot sodomy.

Video games? We may as well blame the war in Iraq and reality TV.

Anyone notice this guy was wearing a khaki (desert) vest rather than the standard camouflauge pattern your average mass killer from two decades ago may have bought, and seemed more motivated by the predicted after-effect of his bullshit TV-like 'confessional' than anything else? This kid was so attention hungry and posturing that if you'd have showed me his videos and pictures a day before the shooting I'd have said you should put him in movies. To me it just totally smacked of dramatism and some phony sense of purpose. He seemed like a bad poet and a worse actor. Unfortunately, he went on to kill folks.

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boorite wrote:

 

The problem really is that the wrong people have guns.

 

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I think it's possible that guns turn people into the wrong people. This plays into my theory that life and death power over your fellow man damages your psyche. 

WHO THE HELL IS JACK THOMPSON!?

Jack Thompson

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FinnNYC wrote:

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boorite wrote:

 

The problem really is that the wrong people have guns.

 

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I think it's possible that guns turn people into the wrong people. This plays into my theory that life and death power over your fellow man damages your psyche. 

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I agree that it's possible.

From Wikipedia:

John Bruce “Jack” Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is an American attorney and activist, based in Coral Gables, Florida.  Thompson describes himself as a Christian conservative and a Republican.  After an initial foray into politics, Thompson concentrated his legal efforts against obscenity, particularly in rap music and broadcasts by radio personality Howard Stern.  More recently, he has focused on violence as well, particularly in the content of computer and video games and their alleged effects on children.  Thompson is also frequently involved in medical malpractice lawsuits in his capacity as an attorney.

He is also a tremendous cunt.

I didn't know exactly who he was. I just found jumping on the bandwagon easier than thinking. And what do you know, he really is a monumental cunt. From now on, I'm blindly following you guys.

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boorite wrote:
I didn't know exactly who he was. I just found jumping on the bandwagon easier than thinking. And what do you know, he really is a monumental cunt. From now on, I'm blindly following you guys.

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Then I propose we should all become an hero.

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choadwarrior wrote:

From what I can see, universities have a long way to go to develop plans and relationships with law enforcement that K-12 schools have had to put into place for years.

I'll fight the urge to second guess what the university and police did wrong...when the dust settles, the state of VA will commission a multi-disciplinary review of the incident and the report will be the framework for university active shooter response.

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Just to clarify, when I said many people at the university had done what they were supposed to do, I meant before El Creepo became an active shooter. Response to the actual emergency seems to my untrained eye to have been a Mongolian clusterfuck.

Having spent the last 20-odd years in universities, I'm not surprised.  Our experience of crime on campus is mostly made up of sexual harrassment, date rape, drunk driving, theft of bicycles and unattended personal items, and hit-and-run crimes by residents of sleazy adjoining neighborhoods. There is the occasional murder-suicide, and I have even watched police respond to what they thought was a bomb. Some of this crime is serious and violent and very much on our minds day-to-day, but I'm not aware that the spree shooter is something that's planned for at any level.

Which is weird, because America's introduction to the spree shooter was on a university campus, way back in 1966 at the University of Texas, when an undiagnosed brain tumor caused a guy to go insane, and he got on top of the clock tower with a rifle and shot 46 people before the cops killed him. I spent 8 years literally in the shadow of a similar clock tower at LSU, and it was hard to look at it without thinking of the UT sniper. I mean every day.

In a case like that, I suppose someone would just call SWAT, and that would be that. Maybe the apparent confusion at VT started when police supposed that the incident they were investigating-- the double murder in the dormitory-- was over. When shooting broke out two hours later in the classroom building, the description of the shooter was at odds with the description from witnesses at the dorm. So understandably, nobody could tell what the hell was going on.

I guess what caught officials flatfooted was the continuation of the shooting spree after a short delay, and they're already being criticized for failing to issue some kind of alert immediately upon discovering the first crime. I know they don't want to cause a panic, but then again, it might be nice to tell people that a murderer appears to be on the loose in the neighborhood. Saying they didn't want to disrupt classes would appear pretty weak in retrospect.

Just thinking out loud here and not really fighting the urge to second-guess as much as choadwarrior.

i just scanned this thread, so if someone already said this sorry:

crackmole jesusbungee!

also, if someone said this, sorry:

if the u.s. goes the route of the u.k. and makes it near impossible to own a gun, they should go full bore and also make our police force a gunless one, as the uk's is. any objections raised by the police to this could be thrown back in their face since it would mirror citizens' objections with their not being allowed guns, the latter being something the police would have most likely dismissed since they'd be advocating the gun ban

i'd be for it personally, if the police also didn't have guns. but know this: criminals will always have guns. you name 4 illegal things right now, and i'll tell you where to find them. the difference being with the police ALSO not having guns, they'd be more motivated to reduce the number of criminals who have them by actually doing something about it, instead of just sitting back polishing their own guns as criminals ding us back and forth for target practice

Look at all these copycats. I'm seriously frightened of all the people I share my air with.

Actually gun crime is still an issue in the UK, espeically in highly populated poor urban areas where gang culture is rife, such as manchester, Nottingham and parts of London. Admittedly its not as prevailant as the US, but there have been qute a few gang related shootings in the papers lately. And in this post 2001 terror fueled world I do see a lot more cops on the beat with guns (although I do believe we still restrict them to specially trained squads, not the regular bobbies-on-the-beat)

Personally Im in favour of gun control, and I echo Dingo's sentiments, because once I get past the child-like enthusiasm of "Cool there's a cop with a gun", I start to get the grown-up sentiments of "Holy Shit, there's a cop with a gun"

Then again we lock up farmers for taking a pop at burglers breaking into their homes, which in America would have been fair game. Our Laws ain't perfect by any stretch.

Statistics and common sense prove however that less guns = less gun deaths.

Oh and about that clause in the Second Ammendment, they're patently talking about keeping the people ready to fend off the British, or any other foreign power, which as a new state in the 18th century during a time of revolution in old europe is hardly surprising,, but hell you haven't even got the commies to worry about now. It's an out-dated piece of legistlature that is no longer relevant to America in the 21st century, but then I am British and I would say that to cover up our plans for eventual retaking of the 'Colonies' . {evil grin}

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TheGovernor wrote:

Then again we lock up farmers for taking a pop at burglers breaking into their homes, which in America would have been fair game.

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Only if you kill him.  If you only wound him he'll probably sue you for the injuries he incurred while breaking into your house.

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TheGovernor wrote:

Oh and about that clause in the Second Ammendment, they're patently talking about keeping the people ready to fend off the British, or any other foreign power, which as a new state in the 18th century during a time of revolution in old europe is hardly surprising,, but hell you haven't even got the commies to worry about now. It's an out-dated piece of legistlature that is no longer relevant to America in the 21st century,

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Actually, the ammendment wasn't just to protect citizens from foreign power, but also from their own government.  Remember, when they wrote the thing, most of the people in what was to become the United States still considered themselves British.

So a private citizen can still buy a semi-automatic handgun. but the ammendment might still be outdated since now the government has guns and gernades and flame throwers and tanks and ion cannons.  Still, I'd like to know if I ever did have to join a movement to overthrow the government that it wouldn't be a complete slaughter.

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TheGovernor wrote:

Statistics and common sense prove however that less guns = less gun deaths.

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I don't know about that. I've been looking at statistics from various sources and they say different. Especially for knife crime. Even British crime prevention people acknowledge that tighter legislation isn't helping.

Though you can't look at raw statistics and incidents alone. Keep in mind that the population of the United States is 301,500,000 and the population of the UK is 60,600,000. So 10,000 incidents of something to the UK might seem like a lot, but to the US it's more than three times fewer the percentage. As far as I'm concerned, it's more important to look at the people involved and hear what they're saying instead of just legislating things to death. Criminals and law enforcement say that more legislation isn't working. But apparently it's cheaper and easier to pretend that something is being done.

Of course, I'm one of those people that think we should attack the actual problem instead of sticking a butteryfly closure on a sucking chest wound. But what the fuck do I know? I just grew up with cops and government agents.

An afterthought. What I find interesting in all these reports is that they almost unanimously agree that weapon crime in the US is decreasing and weapon crime in the UK is increasing.

Considering airsoft guns are considered offensive weapons in the UK, I wonder if anyone there knows how paintball guns are classified. Cause those bastards really sting. Especially when little brothers are still mad about being conned into doing all your chores and decide to...nevermind.