Gunman kills 21 on Virginia Tech campus

[mkloby]

..these people are usually disaffected psycotic former students with a grudge...and of course gun control would make it a bit harder than being able to buy an assault rifle over the counter no questions asked..

..mind boggling ...elsewhere in the free world we just sit here and wonder at the stupidity of it all...

Belated - but define assault rifle for me please. Next, tell me how an armalite is different from another semi-auto rifle or carbine? Assault weapons are a catch phrase from gun control nuts that actually have no real meaning. In NJ an M1 is banned as an "assault weapon!" (or was when I left)

You also seem proud of yourself that you stated that basically he had some bolts loose and a grudge, but my 3 month old son that can't talk could have told you that. I gather nothing else from your postings that you do not understand the US gun control laws (federal, state, nor local) and how they work or effect the citizenry. As Flyboyj pointed out, the majority of crimes are done w/ illegally procured firearms. NJ has some very strict gun control laws - it isn't helping there, is it? Instead, what you have is a society where the criminals are armed to the teeth, law abiding citizens are disarmed, and the police in many areas are overburdened.

 

[Lucky13]

Can't ANY KIND of weapon be a assault weapon??

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Can't ANY KIND of weapon be a assault weapon??

Yep - and it depends on the politicians. The "Assault Weapon" phrase came from California assemblyman Roberti when he did a little homework and read about assault rifles. Trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about he came up with the term "Assault Weapon."

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Just figured I would add a poll to see what others opinions on the matter are. Please vote.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Wilco...

 

[Matt308]

And thus spawned the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. A laundry list of weapons both by features and by name. Mags limited to 10rds, no bayonet lug, and a list of other feature deemed evil in certain combinations. But the bayonet lug ban had to be the most emotional tripe ever put to law. Made the gun grabbers feel better though!

 

[Matt308]

Just figured I would add a poll to see what others opinions on the matter are. Please vote.

Did you want the WMD poll in the VTech thread, Adler?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

And thus spawned the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. A laundry list of weapons both by features and by name. Mags limited to 10rds, no bayonet lug, and a list of other feature deemed evil in certain combinations. But the bayonet lug ban had to be the most emotional tripe ever put to law. Made the gun grabbers feel better though!

I own an SKS - yep, I had to remove the bayonet (which I would use as a "Cy-pod" when I went shooting). Like I'm really going to go and "bayonet" someone . I'd like to see if there are any recoreded murders in the US for anyone gettig bayoneted by an SKS. The stupidasses that made the ban didn't realize that an SKS could shoot with the same lethally as an AK-47; it was just a bit longer.

 

[Matt308]

Do you own the Yugo Model 59 with the evil grenade launcher or have one of the old Russian or Chinese versions? I have the Russian version in pristine shape. Built like a tank.

 

[pbfoot]

Flyboy assholes are equally distributed amongst the world we have a our fair share.In fact we have a whole political party just for them However the vetting process to purchase the weapon was bogus... an alien and a certified nut was able to purchase a weapon no questions asked . The check was cursory and he didn't show up on the computer and the dealer said "he had VA ID and a credit card " if the guy from Deliverance is the first check I would be worried
I believe a lot of folks in the US would state any further checks would be violating their rights. Well the alien certainly violated 32 peoples rights and if preventing such a mishap would save those kids lives "check me out I've nothing to fear".
plain and simple not everyone is qualified or stable enough for a weapon and checks should be in place just like the ones we have for the purchase of explosives

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Did you want the WMD poll in the VTech thread, Adler?

OOOps thanks for pointing that out. I had both up at the same time. I am going to remove this one and put it in the other thread.

 

[Matt308]

Flyboy assholes are equally distributed amongst the world we have a our fair share.In fact we have a whole political party just for them However the vetting process to purchase the weapon was bogus... an alien and a certified nut was able to purchase a weapon no questions asked . The check was cursory and he didn't show up on the computer and the dealer said "he had VA ID and a credit card " if the guy from Deliverance is the first check I would be worried
I believe a lot of folks in the US would state any further checks would be violating their rights. Well the alien certainly violated 32 peoples rights and if preventing such a mishap would save those kids lives "check me out I've nothing to fear".
plain and simple not everyone is qualified or stable enough for a weapon and checks should be in place just like the ones we have for the purchase of explosives

But Pb the laws are already on the books. He was not supposed to be able to purchase a handgun. EVER! We shouldn't be grabbing guns, but wondering why his mental facility commitment was not caught in the background check. You don't ban cars because the DMV gave an illegal a drivers license.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Do you own the Yugo Model 59 with the evil grenade launcher or have one of the old Russian or Chinese versions? I have the Russian version in pristine shape. Built like a tank.

Mine is Chinese. Once I got all the cosmoline out it never misfired.

Flyboy assholes are equally distributed amongst the world we have a our fair share.In fact we have a whole political party just for them However the vetting process to purchase the weapon was bogus... an alien and a certified nut was able to purchase a weapon no questions asked . The check was cursory and he didn't show up on the computer and the dealer said "he had VA ID and a credit card " if the guy from Deliverance is the first check I would be worried
I believe a lot of folks in the US would state any further checks would be violating their rights. Well the alien certainly violated 32 peoples rights and if preventing such a mishap would save those kids lives "check me out I've nothing to fear".
plain and simple not everyone is qualified or stable enough for a weapon and checks should be in place just like the ones we have for the purchase of explosives

The guy should not of been out in public to begin with...

"Authorities on Wednesday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment."

That's where the whole mess started, not at the background check, which by the way never existed until the anti-gun lobby got it written into Federal law.

 

[pbfoot]

But Pb the laws are already on the books. He was not supposed to be able to purchase a handgun. EVER! We shouldn't be grabbing guns, but wondering why his mental facility commitment was not caught in the background check. You don't ban cars because the DMV gave an illegal a drivers license.

Thats exactly what I was saying the laws are already on the books but but appear to be cosmetic checks rather then real. If I remember correctly when these laws were enacted the complaint was that they were toothless but had been watered down during the legislative procedure to ensure that they would pass

 

[Matt308]

That's where the whole mess started, not at the background check, which by the way never existed until the anti-gun lobby got it written into Federal law.

...with the pro-gun lobby support.

 

[Matt308]

Thats exactly what I was saying the laws are already on the books but but appear to be cosmetic checks rather then real. If I remember correctly when these laws were enacted the complaint was that they were toothless but had been watered down during the legislative procedure to ensure that they would pass

There is some merit of truth that much wrangling went into the exact wording of the laws. What was of most concern was that the laws would be open ended and allow for abuse by witholding any closure to the check. The fact that the laws are not supported by the infrastructure is NOT a gun problem, but rather a problem with our ability to properly prioritize funding and dissemination of necessary information.

Ho was deemed mentally unstable, by authorities. He was in a "gun-free" zone. That's two laws he has broken before he ever even pulls the weapons out of his sack.

 

[Matt308]

Grandfather of the killer announced his son, the killer's father, came from Saudi Arabia prior to his marriage to killer's mother. True?

 

[Matt308]

And see? This is the kinda $hit that needs to be addressed right now. Take her kid(s) away and lock her up. FOR-E-V-E-R!!

________________________________________________
From Fox News...

CHURCH HILL, Tenn. —

A mother of a kindergarten student was banned from a school after officials said she walked into a classroom, pointed a toy gun at students and pulled the trigger several times.

The incident happened Tuesday, a day after the shootings at Virginia Tech, and scared the teachers and students.

Church Hill police and Hawkins County school officials were scheduled to meet Thursday with the woman, whose name was not immediately released, and determine if charges should be filed. Officials have already banned the woman from Church Hill Elementary School for one year.

The woman and another small child went to her student's classroom to pay for an upcoming field trip, and the incident happened when the teacher turned around to log in the payment.

"The mom walked in toward the middle of the classroom, and the teacher heard this click, click, click, click — like four to six times," school principal Jean Heise said. "A teacher's assistant witnessed her take a gun and point it directly toward four to five kids. With everything that's happened the last couple of days, she (the assistant) was just in shock."

The woman then left with the small child and took the gun with her. The gun was metallic silver with western styling like a cap pistol.

Heise immediately called the police. Later, the woman apologized to the principal and said, "I didn't mean any harm."

Church Hill Police Chief Mark Johnson said the woman could be charged with aggravated assault, and he was eager to hear the woman's reasoning.

"Even before Virginia Tech you would think that the average adult in America today would know you don't bring any type of gun to school — toy or not. Second of all, you wouldn't go around pointing at kindergartners making shooting noises," he said.

Church Hill is about nine miles west of Kingsport, along the Virginia border.

 

[mkloby]

Can't ANY KIND of weapon be a assault weapon??

That was exactly my point. It's just meaningless demonizing terminology.

 

[Lucky13]

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
48 minutes ago



BLACKSBURG, Va. - Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was pushed around and laughed at as a schoolboy in suburban Washington because of his shyness and the strange, mumbly way he talked, former classmates say.

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Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.

Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.

Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. The high school classmates' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on the video rant Cho mailed to NBC in the middle of his rampage at Virginia Tech.

In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself as persecuted and rants about rich kids.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, who came to the U.S. at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

In other developments Thursday:

Gov. Timothy Kaine announced the appointment of an independent panel to look into the tragedy and how authorities handled it. Police and university officials have been accused of missing warning signs in Cho's behavior and failing to safeguard the campus after the gunfire broke out. The panel will be led by former Virginia State Police superintendent Gerald Massengill and will also include former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

• University officials said that all of Cho's student victims would be awarded degrees posthumously, and that other students terrorized by the shootings might be allowed to end the semester immediately without consequences.

Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield High graduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.

Stephanie Roberts, 22, a member of Cho's graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.

"I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody," she said. "I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier."

But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus — Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school as Cho, according to Lilick's Facebook page. And Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as "the question mark kid."

"I don't know if she knew that it was him for sure," Heck said. "I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door."

Heck added: "She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite."

Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.

Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was in several classes with Cho in high school, including advanced-placement calculus and Spanish. She said he walked around with his head down, and almost never spoke. And when he did, it was "a real low mutter, like a whisper."

As part of an exam in Spanish class, students had to answer questions in Spanish on tape, and other students were so curious to know what Cho sounded like that they waited eagerly for the teacher to play his recording, she said. She said that on the tape, he did not speak confidently but did seem to know Spanish.

Wilder recalled high school teachers trying to get him to participate, but "he would only shrug his shoulders or he'd give like two-word responses, and I think it just got to the point where teachers just gave up because they realized he wasn't going to come out of the shell he was in, so they just kind of passed him over for the most part as time went on."

She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn't, she said.

Wilder said Cho wasn't any friendlier in college, where "he always had that same damn blank stare, like glare, on his face. And I'd always try to make eye contact with him because I recognized the kid because I'd seen him for six years, but he'd always just look right past you like you weren't there."

Eleven people hurt in the attack remained hospitalized, at least one in serious condition.

Authorities on Wednesday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.

Also, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and menacing, uncommunicative demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43 photos — many of them showing Cho, in a military-style vest and backward baseball cap, brandishing handguns. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.

The package helps explain one mystery: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," a snarling Cho says on video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said Thursday that the material contained little they did not already know. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.

"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.

"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."

With a backlash developing against the media, Fox News said it would stop running the pictures, and other networks said they would severely limit their use.

"It has value as breaking news," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, "but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam."

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