<p>One of the professors killed was a Holocaust survivor. He heroically blocked the doorway so his students could flee. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266506,00.html[/url]”>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266506,00.html</a></p>
<p>It’s bad enough to read about 32 anonymous people being killed. It’s excruciating to read about individuals. The Israeli professor ldmom mentions was 76 years old, apparently still very active. I’m sure it will be even worse to read about the young people. What a waste.</p>
<p>What freaks me out is that this resident alien obtained weapons legally.</p>
<p>So much for homeland security.</p>
<p>I have two questions. How could they have had the shooter in custody after the first incident? Was that some sort of rumor? The other one is, Did the shooter kill the student that he was originally looking for?</p>
<p>Virginia Gunman Identified as a Student</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin</a></p>
<p>dke: they never had anyone is custody. they thought the gunman had fled the campus. The police don’t know whoelse, if anyone, the shooter was targeting. I am sure more will come out now that they have identified this student.</p>
<p>I studied at another university in Virginia and the fellow across the hall from my dorm room owned a pistol, as did at least two other fellows I knew, but they lived off campus. The university permited residents to own guns but required the owners to register them with the school and not possess them in the dorms nor other campus facilities.</p>
<p>Partial list of victims…largest one I’ve found yet…</p>
<p>This is such a horrible tragedy…I hope the families and students involved find peace</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266466,00.html[/url]”>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266466,00.html</a></p>
<p>students owning guns and having them on campus…hmmmm, lets see, we have students at frat parties drinking to excess, sometimes until death. What we really want is to put weapons in their hands because they have such great self control and judgement at that age. Adults, think!</p>
<p>Two of the most heavily weaponized civil societies are Iraq and Lebanon. Somehow, this doesn’t inspire much confidence about everyone having a gun serving to reduce the amount of violence. And then you have idyllic places like the Czech Republic.</p>
<p>Names and faces make this much more real and emotional. I can’t imagine the anguish these families are experiencing. My heart aches for them.</p>
<p>I think the boys at Hampden-Sydney can BYOG (Bring your own Gun) but they have to keep them in some sort of locked case on campus.</p>
<p>I’m an opinion columnist for the newspaper at my school and I was asked by my editor to write a piece on this incident. After staring at a blank screen from roughly two and a half hours, I spewed this out. I don’t know how many will necessarily agree with me, but I guess that’s why it’s called an “Opinion Column”. This was tough to write.</p>
<p>I still remember the day vividly. It was a normal Tuesday in Ontario Canada, and I had just gotten back from lunch when I was called into the Principal’s office. I was thinking what every other 8th grader would be thinking at the time “Oh geez, how did I screw up now?” When I got to the office I was told by the Principal that the World Trade Center in New York City had just been attacked. My heart sunk immediately after hearing the news. I felt a sudden rush of sadness, shock and anger that I had never experienced before. </p>
<p>On Monday afternoon when I turned on my television and heard the news of the massacre that took place on the campus of Virginia Tech, that exact same feeling donned upon me. </p>
<p>Aside from having one of the most unusual names of any college in America, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is a very normal school. It is home to a stellar student body, an outstanding athletic program and a very strong academic reputation. It’s not a flashy school that demands media attention, but it is still very highly regarded. This is what makes this incident so sobering in my opinion. If this type of thing could happen in rural Virginia, it could have happened anywhere. This is a thought that I’m sure crossed most students minds when they first heard about this tragic event.</p>
<p>The media, as it is always so quick to do, is trying to assess blame for this incident. As I am writing this, CNN is blaring in the background demanding answers. “How did this happen?” “Why did this happen?” “Will it happen again?” </p>
<p>Many outlets are questioning the religious beliefs of the murderer. “Was he Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Buddhist?” I feel that this question is erroneous because none of these religions advocate murder. The person that did this does not possess moral values. Religion is about faith and love. This is a person who only knew hate. </p>
<p>Another source of blame is the Campus Police at Virginia Tech. I don’t feel that using the people who are perhaps feeling the most pain from this incident as a scapegoat solves anything. The police were given a 50/50 judgment call after the first shooting took place at a campus dormitory. They had two options in how to deal with the students living on campus. The first was to tell them to stay in their dorms, where there had been two people shot earlier. The second was to assume that this was an isolated case and that the gunman had fled campus. They decided allow students to go to classes. There’s no way the university could have anticipated that a mass execution would take place two hours after the first shooting. If this man had not attacked Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus, he may very have taken his anger out on the inhabitants of an off-campus building. There was no way anyone could have known what this twisted individual was up to. </p>
<p>Finally, and most absurdly in my opinion, many are saying that this is an issue of gun control. I do not own a gun, nor does any person in my family, but I do not believe that you can stop a murderer that is set on killing simply by banning guns. Ban guns and murderers will use knives, ban knives and murderers will use pipe bombs, ban pipe bombs and… my point is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The right to arms is apart of our Constitution, like it or not, and it will probably not be amended in our lifetime.</p>
<p>Now is not a time for blame, but a time for grieving. It is a time to remember the lives of the students that were murdered, not the person that murdered them. If it were up to me, the person who committed this crime would not have his name released in media. He should not be given the satisfaction of being remembered, but rather the insult of being completely forgotten. </p>
<p>This is an event that will surely be etched as one of the darkest in American history. How do we as students heal from this catastrophe? We go to class, we learn, we laugh, and we enjoy our college experience. We do all this in honor of the 32 victims that will never have the opportunity to do these things ever again.</p>
<p>It is so hard to bear and I do not even know the students or teachers who perished. I can’t even imagine what it is like to be close to them. </p>
<p>These kinds of guns are not like hunting rifles. These kinds of guns have no purpose other than for killing people. There is no need to own such guns. While the attention is rightfully on the grief, it is hard to not also think about the damage an individual can inflict on so many in such a short period of time if armed with such weopens designed to kill humans. Yes yes yes, as the gun folks like to say, “people kill, not guns” but people who wish to kill a lot of people quickly could not do so without easy access to these sorts of guns. They simply could not unless perhaps with a very powerful bomb.</p>
<p>EDIT: sfincter, I posted here without having seen the copy of the article you wrote. Nice job getting out your thoughts at this difficult time. I wasn’t responding to what you said about guns. However, now that I read what you wrote on that aspect, my opinion is that people who do these sorts of things will still find a way to do harm even if they don’t have access to guns. However, guns enable them to kill a lot of people quickly, in ways that things like knives do not. While we can’t prevent such tragedies, measures can be taken to make the obstacles harder to do these sorts of things. It should not be this easy to obtain a lethal weopen designed to kill humans and put in the hands of someone with this capability to take out many innocent people.</p>
<p>When my older children were young we lived in a part of the country where hunting was a favored pasttime of many. We came from another part of the country and were anti-gun and certainly not hunters. Before we would allow our children to have a play date we would call parents and ensure that their homes were entirely gun/rifle free.</p>
<p>Were that it were still this easy.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how anyone can hear of the ease with which this young man went to a gun shop and bought two guns and tons of ammo within a week or two of this bloodbath and not be finally convinced that gun laws need to be far more restrictive in that state and nationwide. To shrug off this issue with “people kill people” is a stance devoid of responsibility and the will to see change.</p>
<p>I’m not gunna lie but I BET that south koreans are going to be discriminated against more or something like that. I would not like to be south korean right now. No offense, but there are people who are crazy like that.</p>
<p>The fact that he was so heavily armed and had so much ammo means he was planning this advance. He was going to do this whether he had access to guns or not. I’m not saying that I’m a gun toting person by any means, but it’s just unrealistic to ban guns all together as some people are suggesting. Even if they put tougher regulations on guns, think about this: good guys aren’t always the people selling guns. America has proven that any time you put restrictions on something they like, they’ll find a way around it (see: Prohibition and marijuana). It’s easy to point the fingers and blame the lack of gun laws for this, but this incident probably would have taken place whether there were major restrictions or not based on the actions the killer took.</p>
<p>I’m not shrugging off the issue and I agree that we need to change the gun laws. That doesn’t relieve the anger I have toward this despicable man, nor would it make me feel any safer, if he were my daughter’s “boyfriend”, had gun laws prevented him from legally purchasing those weapons.</p>
<p>If we should not have gun control then why should we have nuclear control?
Isn’t that the goal of gun control and nuclear control is to stop madness and terrorism?</p>