VA Tech: What is the world coming to? Are people simply bad at heart?

[anonemouse 1]

But what about his creative writing where he fantasized about killing people and wrote things that his teachers found "disturbing." Is that enough? I have a hard time with that.

I don't know if that would be enough to strip him of his right to own guns, but it should have been enough to require him to undergo a psychiatric exam. The results of that may have been enough.

[396power 2]

re: "There is certainly no reason why anyone outside of the police or the military should have access to semi- or fully automatic weapons. This is just fucken dumb and it is criminal."

exactly the point....we have 20,000 gun laws in this country...and it is especially difficult to get a 'fully automatic weapon'....they have even greater restrictions....

What we are left with, is a set of laws that give the non-criminal the same rights of accessibility as the criminal has...it's called 'constitutional law'....

re: "Certainly it is true that firearm ownership made sense at the point when America was being colonised and the issue of the right to bear arms made sense"

...perhaps you doubt many in this country believe that is the very case today.....

Green, you've made some very good points. They aren't going to change either the laws or the opinions of those who think otherwise.

re: "There is no longer any reason why firearms should be freely available to anyone other than farmers, ranchers, cops, military, and gun hobbyists."

Perhaps in your neighborhood that is the case. To draw such a broad conclusion over such a diverse topic that has provoked heated disagreement for the last 100 years in the US, may be understandable.

What England and Australia do is their business. And Canada too, eh?

re: "And if the police don't respond to a home invasion, then you've got crappy police."

What we have is a small rural police overwhelmed by the dregs of society, supported by the largess of the taxpayers duped into feeding and housing those who should be in prison but aren't because of the efforts of social reformers who think given enough chances they will change their ways. That theory doesn't seem to be working very well.

I have a semi-auto sub compact Glock .45 And I have no crimanal record and I would not murder anyone. My gun is similar to the one this murder used. I use it at the deer lease and for protection. ( and no I don't kill deer with it but if I rustle up somthing like a snake or a wild cat ect. it would be harder to shoot it w/ a rifle. So I carry the pistol also.)

[Sunta 4]

I just viewed the most fascinating news clip ever. It said that people who study killer's brains after death are finding a very high percentage of them have brain damage in the part of the brain that governs impulse control and rage. I think they said 20 out of 30 killers in the stud they did exhibited the same kind of frontal lobe damage. I find this absolutely compelling and would like to learn more about it. I wonder if an autopsy would/will reveal any brain damage in this case.

[anonemouse 1]

I think he shot himself in the head, so I don't know if a pathologist would be able to determine brain damage (other than bullet brain damage).

[foodstampchamp 3]

...would you be referring to the heli-swat team at the local crack houses 3 times in the past 6 months, the home invasion where the truck in my driveway was broken into a year ago the same night 3 other neighbors had their 'alarms' activate....or some of the other drug related crime?

The frequency of drug arrests and various thievery, burglary and auto theft continues to climb. I've never seen it like this in all the years I've lived here.

We are not far from the freeway corridor North-south that is a known drug conduit. And home crank operations spring up like dandelions after the ongoing raids...

It didn't used to be like this out here.

I live in a super small mining town. This town does not have one single stop light, cab service, restraunt (unless you count the burger king that is in the shell station). My town has a population of about 2,000. But I am looking out my living room window right now and can see Interstate 80. And when I look out the other side about a mile from me is train tracks that are very busy. There are a lot of homeless train people and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how many people travel Interstate 80 on a daily basis. I bet in this town and the small town that is about 18 miles from here has had one murder a month on the average in the last year. In fact, one ladies body was found about 5 miles from my house about 8 weeks ago. Due to some stupid decision I made when I was 19 years old I am not allowed to own/posses a gun. Even though I have never shot a gun in my life, there are times in the last year where my decision have come back to haunt me because I definately wish I could own one now. I don't know what's happening around here. You know what else I forgot to mention. About half a mile outside of town (which I can see from my front porch) there is a prison and it is not unheard of for the cops around here to do a house to house search when someone escapes. That only happens about once a year, but that is once a year too much in my book. I'm not saying a gun can protect me 100% no matter what circumstance, but I do know that it would probably give me more peace of mind. There is no real way of knowing what may or may not happen to me in the future, but I do know I would like peace of mind now.

[susannah 2]

Both TommyO and I live in Canada where not only are the gun laws very, very strict but where gun ownership has never become part of our culture. This is an attitude which is much more in alignment with the attitudes (and laws) prevalent in England and in continental Europe.

While all English speaking Canadians have grown up on American culture - American TV, movies, etc (the Canuck stuff was just so boring and second rate in comparison, eh) - the actual ownership of guns has never, ever formed part of our culture. Our parents didn't have them and none of our friends' parents had 'em either. And you certainly didn't see them for sale in urban stores.

Nope, as far as I can gather, the gun thang remained the exclusive purview of cops, farmers, ranchers, the military, and gun enthusiasts. It is still difficult to get a gun in Canada unless you are a criminal. I have still, at the age of 57, never handled a gun! None of my friends have 'em.

Our criminals get their guns from across the border. A lot of our new and up-coming criminals are juveniles who belong to gangs. These kids are school drop-outs and are are part of the culturally and racially alienated young. They tend to act like morons and it is difficult to maintain a politically sensitive attitude towards a group of individuals who are so seemingly anxious to destroy themselves.

Nevertheless, these kids are professionals in their own way, as are the other chief groups of gun owners inside this country. For sure these kids do shoot each other up and they have certainly inflated the mortality figures for my city, the City of Toronto.

But the mortality rates from gunfire in this country are still extraordinarily low compared to those in America. This is because most of us have never seen a working gun let alone have access to one. And those of us who do carry guns are professionals; they realise that they are tools of the trade or they are busy shooting each other up over gangland territory issues. Of course this is not to say that an innocent is never harmed by a gun. It is to say that guns are not easily available in this country.

This would mean that much of our violence is of a more intimate nature. When Canadians want to kill each other we have to strangle or knife each other. What this means is that, although we do have gun deaths in this country, the overall body count is far, far lower.

From what I have read so far about this tragic business, the young man who performed these dreadful acts was seriously emotionally ill and had been identified as a troubled soul by any number of individuals for a long, long time. He had been noted as such by a number of teachers and by fellow students but all of these individuals were under the same set of restraints, were they not? What could they have done even if they could have found themselves together and in one place and able to trade stories of this individual's weird and disturbing behaviour?

We live under civil laws which seek to protect the individual and his rights - even the eccentric or artistic individual - but these same laws also, and tragically so, serve to protect the rights of those individuals who by their actions are later proved to be unacceptable to us as a society.

It is true that people who come from countries which are less gun-friendly than the U.S. have issues with your country's current approach to gun ownership. We don't git it! Nope, not at all.

Certainly it is true that firearm ownership made sense at the point when America was being colonised and the issue of the right to bear arms made sense within the framework of America's choice to withdraw from the economic oppression of its colonial masters. The statement of the ability to protect the freedom of this newly born country and the right of each individual to bear arms in order to defend this country made sense within the framework of the era.

But let's get real, eh. The 21st century does not belong to cowboys and goofs who keep loaded guns in their night tables. There is no longer any reason why firearms should be freely available to anyone other than farmers, ranchers, cops, military, and gun hobbyists. There is certainly no reason why anyone outside of the police or the military should have access to semi- or fully automatic weapons. This is just fucken dumb and it is criminal.

Brilliantly Said Green. Most Aussies would share those sentiments.

Susannah

[susannah 2]

Gday, It was interesting how Bush rushed to state that there would be no changes to gun control laws. Gee let me see, who bankrolls the Republican Party? Err could it be the NRA?

This is not an anti US issue either folks, because I like you critters. Just hate your guns!

Susannah

[Davyna 0]

A true sociopath would not have a hard time faking his way through a psychological examination in order to purchase a gun.

[green 6]

an interesting POV on passivity, protection and inability to take decisive actions in critical moments :

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzEzYzQ0Y2MyZjNlNjY1ZTEzMTA0MGRmM2EyMTQ0NjY

I always enjoy reading Mark Steyn. Thanks for posting this, Jack.

[gailannr 1]

Gday, It was interesting how Bush rushed to state that there would be no changes to gun control laws. Gee let me see, who bankrolls the Republican Party? Err could it be the NRA?:eek: :eek:

This is not an anti US issue either folks, because I like you critters. Just hate your guns!

Susannah

Haven't you heard, Bush actually sold him the guns!

[marjon9 6]

Haven't you heard, Bush actually sold him the guns!

Would that be Cho W. Bush?

[NVgirl 2]

Jack, you live in an area with about twice the national crime rate. To me, that is more of a signal that either your community needs to harass its leaders to hire more police or you need to move to a safer locale than a signal that you need a gun.

I disagree that the man should move in lieu of owning a gun. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't like guns, don't advocate for private ownership (and my DH is an avid gun enthusiast - makes for interesting conversations some nights), however, why let some bad apples in a neighborhood have the run of the place by moving? He's got the right to stay in his home and feel protected, however he may do it.

[anonemouse 1]

I disagree that the man should move in lieu of owning a gun. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't like guns, don't advocate for private ownership (and my DH is an avid gun enthusiast - makes for interesting conversations some nights), however, why let some bad apples in a neighborhood have the run of the place by moving? He's got the right to stay in his home and feel protected, however he may do it.

Yes, he does, but honestly, would you choose to stay in a neighborhood that you never, ever felt safe in? Especially if you have a choice? A lot of us say that to have lap-band surgery, we'd do whatever it takes, get loans, sell property, etc. Would we not feel the same way about living in an extremely unsafe neighborhood? Isn't our personal safety and the safety of our loved ones and our personal belongings more important than our weight? When it gets to the point where you KNOW you aren't safe, you should be willing to do whatever it takes to get out of there.

[marjon9 6]

I say we take a poll. If more than 50% of the people on the forum think Jack should move, he'll have until midnight on May 1, 2007 to be out of his house.

[gailannr 1]

Would that be Cho W. Bush?

You wouldn't be name calling, bullying or making fun of someone now would ya fella?