PNH: “But we must also not lose sight of the fact that I am right on every significant moral and political issue.”

I think we can remove "significant," even.

Glad we have the template, now. Although, I'm sure there are some political consultants that will bemoan the loss of jobs and the automation of their profession.

Of course! When Democrats suggest exchanging a clearly-ineffective strategy for one that might actually keep people safe, it's 'cheap point scoring,' 'tawdry abuse of human suffering,' or sometimes 'appeasing Hitler.' When Republicans do it, it's 'defending us from terrorists.'

If you don't hang on Bush's every word, the terrorists win*.

*some restrictions apply. Void where inconvenient.

If you're talking about the loonies jumping all over the Virginia Tech story ... well, let's count the ones we know about so far.

1. White supremacists autoposting to the Bishop thread.

2. Carol Iannone blames co-ed dorms and English majors.

3. John Derbyshire blames the victims for not having a sufficient "spirit of self-defense". Derbyshire is in the habit of saying things like that. Ana Marie Cox makes fun of him for it.

4. Privileged young white guy Nathanael Blake, who's also never put himself in harm's way, agrees with Derbyshire.

I'm morally certain there are more of them out there.

Teresa, one more: Jack Thompson has, reliably enough, declared violent video games the cause of the shootings.

Of course! That was bound to make the list.

#5 Idiot gun-rights people opining that "if only there had been more armed people in the classrooms."

They were teenagers, you fools. Utterly ineligible, by federal law, to purchase handguns or apply for concealed-carry permits. We don't even trust them to buy beer.

Barack Obama seems to have made a speech yesterday, mentioning the Virginia Tech massacre and then saying that losing one's job to outsourcing is another form of violence, but I can't find the full text of the speech online.

Ken Ham, noted Creationist, said the shootings were because of atheism in schools.

This tragedy was caused by (too many/too few guns). If only there were (more/fewer) guns on the campus, it would have been avoided. American society needs to be (more/less) tolerant of possession of firearms, and carry of firearms in public places.

> If only there were (more/fewer) guns on the campus, it would have been avoided.

Well, both, obviously. The gunman should have had fewer guns, and everyone else should have been allowed guns in case he attacked them with a knife.
We just need to identify the Bad People and not let them have guns, and let everyone else have guns.

I heartily endorse this product and/or service. And I have since it happened in my home town thirty-two years ago. Plus ca change...

-- Steve's gotta read more Santayana.

TNH@ 4
2. Carol Iannone blames co-ed dorms and English majors.

**Boggle.**Because it would have been so much easier for the girl at the reception desk in the Girl's Dorm to have stopped the killer before he got upstairs to shot anyone. (I was the girl at the reception desk off and on during college, doing work study. Had I been there, I'd now be a smear of jelly on a wall.)

Big Hank @ 7
#5 Idiot gun-rights people opining that "if only there had been more armed people in the classrooms."

Oh, excellent. A shoot out. Are these people crazy? (Well, yes, of course they are.)

The more things change, indeed.

Although item 2 in Teresa's list at #4 is new to me. Not the co-ed dorms bit, but English majors? (Yes, I know that the gunman was an English major. It's just that I am not used to English majors being profiled as violently sociopathic, as opposed to those in the technical fields...)

...and now that I've gone and read the article, ah, I see. It's not that he was an English major that was the problem. It was that he wasn't a theology major. At least I guess that's what Iannone would have considered not "spiritually empty."

And because I've been reading a lot of feminist blogs lately, I'm wondering why no one in the media's surprised or dismayed that a man went to slaughter a woman he thought he owned. They're only kinda sad that there was so much collateral damage.

Stupid women! Never shoulda gone to college anyway! Also, maybe they shouldn't allow themselves to be visible to men at all.

Niall McAuley @ 9... There is atheism in our school system?

> I'm wondering why no one in the media's surprised or dismayed that a man went to slaughter a woman he thought he owned.

Family legend has it that a relative of mine had to flee Texas after finding his wife and her lover in bed together and shooting them. Allegedly it would have been all right to have just shot him, but you were supposed to assume the woman was innocent and had been forced into the situation rather than shoot without asking questions.
But that was many many years ago, assuming the story is true, and one would hope things had improved.

(Though I'm not surprised that such things still happen sometimes, though of course I am dismayed.
That he would go on to kill everyone else he could is more surprising, and while with hindsight the police reaction to the first shootings was wrong, I don't think the initial assumption that they probably had an isolated incident that was over was wrong, but they should have thought about what might happen - after all it wasn't unprecedented. Isn't hindsight great. Perhaps we should add "As I implicitly predicted" or "As I could have predicted" to the template.)

#4 Teresa Nielsen Hayden, et al. Surely this tagic incident is the result of the prevalence of Black Duster Overcoats in our society today. We must outlaw them.

Although I'm sure that Crazy Uncle Pat will link it to same-sex marriage.

I find this rush to judgment agonizing -- I want to tell them all to STFU, and let people mourn. I try to tell myself that these are all clumsy, frightened attempts to make sense of the senseless -- something human beings appear to have been doing since Gilgamesh, with mixed results -- and that ultimately everyone will fall silent.

However, I do find myself moved by the point which has been made eloquently by Juan Cole and others, which is that this is what the people in Baghdad experience every single day.

Loonie list, continued:

5. Rev. Fred "Kill Fags" Phelps, who has announced he will be picketing the funerals.

Steve Buchheit @ 18: Although I'm sure that Crazy Uncle Pat will link it to same-sex marriage.

Also abortion, environmentalism, the UN, and PETA. Possibly NAFTA as well.

Apparently Westboro Baptist Church (Pulpit of the not-so-reverend Fred Phelp) has an axe to grind in this, too (scroll down past the asterisks):

WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming. “They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads” (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.

Pandagon also links to yet another media outlet jumping on the "blame the victim" bandwagon. (Scroll past the discussion of gun rights down to the update at the bottom of the article.) Apparently the ex-girlfriend is to blame for sparking the massacre. By, apparently, "pouting and relaxing" provocatively or something. Who knew? I was too busy getting sidetracked by her totally off-topic and superfluous status of murder victim.

A-ha. I see John Meltzer and I crossed in the mail on the WBC/Phelps connection. Minds, greatness, alikeness of thinking, word.

At least one commentor has linked the shootings to the existence of co-ed dormitories and postmodernist English curricula.

I am waiting for someone to speculate on why the shooter went to a German class. Or is that particular speculative train of nonsensical thought way too 20th century? Yeah, it is.

Postmodernist English curricula? Who -- what -- /sputtering.

#19 Lizzy L - THANK YOU! My reaction too. I discount the usual irrational fringe jumping on this bandwagon, as the original post described so clearly. But even people I normally find sensible seem to be jumping all over "here's what the university did wrong, here's what the police did wrong, here's what I-could-have-told-everyone." Yes, we need to find what we can about how response could be improved. Yes, if there were egregious errors they should be exposed. I'm not so sure that anything we can learn about the psyche of the killer is all that helpful, but I suppose it won't hurt in terms of lessons learned for heading off other tragedies. But in any case we don't need to do those things - or, especially, expect the people and organizations immediately involved to do them - right this bloody minute!

I am, by the way, a Virginia Tech graduate from some years back, but I hope I would feel the same in any case.

#21 Aconite, well, I don't think he could read all those ideas off the teleprompter before segueing into a spittle-flecked impromptu homily, but Crazy Uncle Pat can dream, can't he?

Someday, I am going to lock Jack Thompson and Fred Phelps in a room together, and see which one has an aneurysm first.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

All I know is this: I cannot, even dipping into my deepest, darkest feelings (the same ones where my villains spring from), begin to understand what prompts someone to go on this kind of rampage. I could easily understand how someone might choose to shoot someone they know. I can even sorta understand how someone in the midst of another crime shoots someone they don't know. I can't get my mind to find any sort of reason how people come to decide to shoot many, many people they do not know. (Not counting doing so for political or related reasons, of course.)

And since I can't manage to get my mind around it at all, I have think that anyone who thinks they have a single, simple answer is extremely self-deluded. It doesn't matter what that answer is.

Okay, here's another one.

- Misogynists who blame Cho's supposed "girlfriend" for setting him off by rejecting him. There's already a picture of her on the net. I'm not going to link to it.

Personally, I expect we'll find in about a week or so that Cho not only never had a "relationship" with the woman in question, but had never even talked to her.

Andy Schlafly over at conservapedia.com (yes, I'm still there) blames
- hard-core pornography (it's been 12 hours -- why haven't the cops told us what was on the guy's harddrive?)
- drugs
- that there were too many legal hurdles to locking him up based on his English teacher's report or disturbing writing
- a 23-year-old being allowed to still be on a college campus

Some of the other folks there are instead sticking with the more reliable & traditional "gun control laws disarmed the victims".

Not linking to avoid googlejuice, but the page topics are "Conservapedia:Would the repeal of gun control laws make incidents like the shooting at Virginia Tech less likely to occur?", "Seung-Hui Cho", "Talk:Main_Page" and "User talk:Aschlafly".

a 23-year-old being allowed to still be on a college campus

He's never heard of graduate students? Or law school, or medical school, or that a bachelor's degree in engineering is now a five-year degree in practice?

According to NPR this morning, the guy had been reported to the campus authorities for stalking.

Oh, yes--twice. He was reported twice.

Jon Meltzer @29: it's already happened. "In an interview with The Times, Haugh said she knew of no connection between the killer and her roommate. . . . 'I’ve never seen him,' she said. 'I don’t know his name. Emily didn’t know him, as far as I know.'"

Graah. I still can't really get my head around it all.

I'm waiting for people to blame immigration or pull up some other stereotype of Asians, as ESPN (yes, the sports channel) led their description of the shooter, once he was identified, by noting that he was a native of South Korea and a permanent resident alien.

. . . which is relevant how, exactly?

Kate, I've already seen calls for deporting all foreign students.

Every time I think I've plumbed the bottom of right-wing buffoonery I break through the crust and keep on going.

Oh, and for the suggestion that the solution is to arm all college students, two words: Friendly Fire.

It's allowing people to attend institutions of higher education that is to blame here. If everyone were home-schooled, this tragedy wouldn't have happened.

OtterB @ 26

Of course there needs to ba a post-mortem (and, oh boy is that an ironic term in this context) analysis of the police reaction, the school's reaction, etc., etc.. And of course that analysis has to wait until things calm down enough that it can be done objectively and with full information.

And no, none of this ranting has anything to do with improving reactions to emergency situations; it has to do with blame. If we can blame someone or some group for this horrific incident we can go back to sleep, safe in the knowledge that, come the revolution, we'll be able to prevent this sort of thing completely just by following our sacred ideology.

Maybe the NTSB should use this methodology. It would be so much simpler just to blame plane crashes on moral decay. Think of the time and money we'd save.

I can't get my mind to find any sort of reason how people come to decide to shoot many, many people they do not know.

I once took a guided tour of Mackinac Island State Park. The guide pointed out the beautiful trilliums that were just then in bloom. "There's a $250 fine for picking trilliums. So if you're going to pick some, pick a lot."

nerdycellist @ #15

I'm wondering why no one in the media's surprised or dismayed that a man went to slaughter a woman he thought he owned.

Ah. I've been avoiding the news for the last few days because it already reminded me too much of the April 1992 dorm shooting at IU, in which my classmate and dear friend Susan Clements and her very nice new boyfriend Steven Molen were killed by her ex boyfriend, who was a foreign national who'd had no trouble buying a bunch of weapons and ammo.

He intended to kill a lot more people, too--he had a list--but he lost his glasses in the struggle with Steven, so he couldn't find his way back to his car. He killed himself a few hours after he shot the others.

I guess nothing much changes.

NB: I like foreign nationals. I just wonder how effective it is to background-check someone who's only been in the country for a couple of years.

As for blaming the targets for not spontaneously rushing the shooter - we train our young Marines and soldiers a long time and under harsh conditions to overcome the societal conditioning against dramatic violence and to ready them to obey orders to "rush the shooter" where they can be killed.

Derbyshire's comment on Flight 93 is obscene. Those passengers (1) knew what was happening and had time to consider a course of action, and (2) knew they were dead anyway if they didn't try. Even then it took a particular combination of personalities to launch that effort.

The kids in the classrooms had no time to plan.

People who have never had to make life or death decisions in crisis situations should be very chary about passing moral judgments on those who do.

#36 James D. Macdonald, second that motion. Having taken combat fire-arms training and the Ohio class for concealed weapons (which my wife range qualified before everybody else, and she had never fired a pistol before - so proud of a husband am I- all the rest of the guys in class were big time hunters and shooters, my pistol jammed and there was a question if I reloaded it fully) I am very, VERY weary of those idiots who claim they want a handgun for self-defense. One word, adrenaline, you ain't hitting squat when it's flowing. Especially if you can't put 10 rounds on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper from 15 yards away while concentrating and able to take your time.

Hmmmm! The students may be too young to buy guns, but the professors aren't!

Of course, that means we'll have a huge, well-armed army of tenued far-left liberal intellectuals on our campuses, forcing our young people to smoke pot, have abortions, and marry gay.

Tina in 28 --

That one is, well, not easy (aren't you glad I don't have write access to the inside of your noggin?) but it's relatively easy to explain.

Berserk rampages are a fairly common, cross-cultural and over substantial time, human male response to having zero social status. It takes either a machismo culture or total isolation to make it really typical, but it's one of the standard failure modes.

I would consider it very unlikely that insecurity-maximizing social mechanisms, especially as applied to immigrants and non-whites, are going to get any assignment of culpability, but, well, this is one of the known ways people break.

The purpose of a system is what the system does, no matter what people say it is supposed to do.

Thank you! I was just thinking I needed to seek that out, and there you go posting it for me.

Graydon, did people (men, I guess) go on killing sprees in pre-modern times, Gilles de Rais aside? Or are you thinking about specifically modern dislocation and destabilization?

Mary Dell @ 41 -- Cho had been in the US since 1992. His parents own a business in Northern Virginia.

#47: what do you mean by 'pre-modern times'? The first reference to 'run amok' in English was 1672, who borrowed it from the Malaysians; Captain Cook wrote in 1772

"To run amock is to get drunk with opium... to sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage."

which sounds very familiar. I don't think that peninsular Malaysia in 1750 was particularly a modern society.

Graydon @ #45:

Wow. WOW. Thank you.

Lori Coulson @ #48:

My mistake. This is what comes of avoiding the news...

Somewhere or other I watched a clip of Jack Thompson talking out of his ass for about a minute before I had to shut it off or vomit. Most of these nasty reactions are sickening but largely ignorable, because they don't have all that much of a following, but people like him are allowed on national news and the average citizen buys it. It pisses me off. Violent entertainment = violent behavior? Screw that. The top-grossing movie of last year was the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, so shouldn't we be seeing an increase in swashbuckling-related crime?

One of my favorite movies is Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but trust me when I say you'll never see me going to a mall to eat people.

James at 36: Oh, and for the suggestion that the solution is to arm all college students, two words: Friendly Fire.

The word Ricochet also leaps to mind. My mind, anyway.

These folks who believe more guns would have made the Virginia Tech situation safer -- can we send THEM to Baghdad? Call it research?

About rage killings/spree killings/ whatever the social science term of are is for these tragedies: a look at the etymology of "berserk" is also instructive.

term of art.

Preview is so very little use when I am not wearing reading glasses.

Ethan @52:

Ditto. The quality of meat is so much higher at a nice Italian restaurant.

As far as a more thoughtful response to the tragedy, there's hilzoy's, which was posted 2 days ago, before we even had many details.

The rest of it? Just mindless noise.

Old Jarhead @ 42

You're absolutely right. In this case there's even more going against the students: the larger the group, the less likely that any individual will act quickly and alone; it's a natural reaction to wait and see what other people do.

Violent combat without getting worked up in advance is not natural to human beings or any other primate. It has to be trained in, and the training doesn't work for everybody in any case. The figure I've heard is that 25% of trained recruits freeze up in their first firefight and never fire their weapons.

But again, blaming the victims is very comforting. They're dead already, so you don't have to do anything to keep it from happening again.

And because I've been reading a lot of feminist blogs lately, I'm wondering why no one in the media's surprised or dismayed that a man went to slaughter a woman he thought he owned.

Women don't own their own bodies; five men on the Supreme Court just ruled on the topic today. Why should anyone be surprised if one man in particular thinks he can just pick his own out of the state herd and lay claim?

Mary Dell (#40), nerdycellist (315): There's been so much about 'why didn't they lock down the campus after the first shooting?' and so few people answering, "Because men shooting women is depressingly common. Men following it up by shooting lots of other people is, relatively and thankfully, rare."

debcha @ 60

Yes, the reports I saw said that they figured it was a 'domestic incident'. That it meant someone was on campus who had shot two people already didn't seem to register much. Maybe the shooter kills himself then, or maybe not; it's still a serious crime. (There was one of those in my apartment complex a few years ago. He shot his ex and himself before the police arrived.)

Re: Locking down the campus.

My partner and I had that discussion the other night. She works at Ohio State University. We concluded that it is impossible to secure a large multi-building facility that does not have fences and gates.

OSU is holding meetings over the next few days with regard to emergency procedures. I don't envy the folk that are going to have to come up with a strategy to handle something like this.

Stefan #44:

Do we really want a bunch of female art history profs with no discernible reflexes handed guns?

The logical reductio ad absurdum (if any r.a.a can be considerd logical) is that they're not only required to become expert-rated, but held responsible for the students that get killed. No thanks.

(Yes, I know you were sending it up.)

All that said, I get a chilly feeling thinking about a student in one of my classes who I was very firm about flunking instead of allowing to drop without prejudice. Fortunately that was 10 years ago.

For another pre-modern example of things getting ugly when you couple the low social status thing with a minimal hope of things getting any better, look at the people's crusade. The main differences are that the crusade had a groupthink element (there were 100,000 of them with a charismatic leader) and they didn't have access to weapons that could produce deadly force with a minimum of training and skill.

I don't know from crazed killing sprees, but in the SCA I love fighting people like Derbyshire who think themselves powerful machomancers. You just sorta hang back, block their one at a time over-powered attacks and let them stick their amrs and head into your favorite target zones. I'm guessing a 9mm pistol has a much larger prefered range than a sword and probably takes a proportionally longer time to cross.

P J Evans @ 61

To be fair, they figured it was a 'domestic incident' AND they were already questioning the person they thought was responsible for the first shooting.

Granted, the original reports of "questioning the gunman" turned into "questioning but not detaining a person of interest who was definitely not the gunman" over the course of the day. But from what I've heard, shortly after the first shooting it would have appeared to VT at least that the police were handling it and no panic button was needed on campus.

@63: "Do we really want a bunch of female art history profs with no discernible reflexes handed guns?"

What? What? What?

What in the hemmoraging heck does being gender or vocation (assuming that the vocation is not military or LE) have to do with whether someone might be competent with a firearm?

George Smiley at #66: I think joann was talking about herself in that very specific description. Being responsible for others' safety directly is a huge responsibility, carrying a gun and being responsible for others' safety even more so, and if she considers her own background and reflexes not up to that level of responsibility I do not blame her. I know I would refuse a gun for the same reasons, only my line would be "female engineering graduate student."

Joann, if I misread your comment I beg forgiveness.

The typical response I see to 'arm everybody' or 'arm teachers and grad students' is 'ricochet' and 'friendly fire' (not just in this thread). However, I haven't seen anybody answer this: even with FF and ricochet, would the body count be more or less than it was on Monday? Would he have made it past the first classroom?

I don't know either, but dismissing it out of hand is hardly scientific.

(By the way, since I haven't posted here in a while and ya'll probably don't remember me, I ask these from the point of view of a liberal atheist - not exactly a wingnut)

GeorgeSmiley #66:

You seem to be having trouble recognizing a clearly labeled reductio ad absurdum. But, just so you'll know why that particular reductive spin--

I'm a female art historian of no discernible reflexes. Speaking *strictly for myself*, no effing way I'd be able to step up to the bar[*] and do *squat* if a disgruntled student with an AK47 came into the classroom. I have no peripheral vision to speak of (consider my perceptions as being those of someone constantly on the cellphone, as discussed in the seatbelt thread--I've *got* peripheral vision, I just can't *use* it for some odd reason), and entry to classrooms is typically at the front, at right angles to where the teacher is holding forth. Add in that this would take place in a darkened room as I show slides, and the most I could expect to do is wave my laser pointer in the guy's direction--once I'd figured out that there was something I needed to do.

[*] And it *would* be my responsibility. Once you've opened that door so that a professor can go armed to class in order to protect the students from maurauders, then there is no excuse for hir not to do so. And it's total failure on the part of the professor who's shot dead before zie can shoot back. I wouldn't sign up. I'm not teaching now, but I swear I'd resign first.

Then, please--consider the implications, practical and political, of an AK47, or even a pistol, sitting on the lectern. It would have to be in the open; it would take months of practice to get a useful draw. (And imagine me fumbling in my purse or briefcase--I can't even find my car keys without an extended fandango.)

As I recall the account I read, Jamie Bishop, the German professor, was the first person killed in his classroom. Expecting *any*body to have sufficient reflexes to deal with that sort of situation is so impractical as to be risible.

As to my comments about gender, all I can say is that my department was over 75% female, both grad students and faculty, and not one member of the faculty had ever, to my knowledge, even been in the same room with a gun, except in a museum situation. I was the only person in my graduate cohort, male or female, to have ever engaged in anything resembling a martial art, and that was fencing. I was simply discussing a situation I knew intimately.

David Bishop @ 68

Here's why I wouldn't want to be in a classroom when everyone pulled out their handguns. When I was in Basic Training, they put us on the rifle range for familiarization with the rifle before trying to teach us how to be marksmen (no gender slur intended, we were all male). They paired us off, each pair got a firing position, and gave each of us a magazine with 3 rounds loaded. I was behind my partner; he was in prone firing position. He got off his first round, which was all he was supposed to fire. But, he got so excited that he turned around to tell someone about it. Of course, he turned his whole body, leaving me with a (locked, loaded, and unsafetied) rifle in my face. I sure as hell didn't trust him not to twitch his trigger finger, and neither did the sergeant. We both yelled at him, and I whacked him on the head, making a nice bonging noise on his helmet that got his attention.

Now imagine this same guy as he gets off his first shot at the berserker who's opened up on the classroom. with no one around to yell at him.

A recent post by Brad Hicks in his LJ discusses what the likely (only?) outcomes would be in a similar situation if everybody were armed. Since the only times I've fired a gun have been target practice at a range, I don't feel qualified to opine. For anyone here who does have experience using guns (for more than plinking at tin cans or paper targets) who reads it, do you agree with his assessment?

One of the more interesting comments I have seen on this whole situation was on BoingBoing http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/18/va_tech_shootings_sm.html -- scroll down to Laura S. Petrelle's comments on the near-futility of reporting crimes to campus police as opposed to community police, and how this may have contributed to this student's continued presence on campus.

Jack Thompson has popped off again? Does anyone know if "Gabe" of Penny Arcade knows about this yet? If not, I expect a "very special" strip as soon as he does...and more faxes to the Seattle Police Department demanding Gabe & Tycho be arrested. (Amazing how bent out of shape some people get if you donate ten grand to charity in their name...) After all, Thompson recently tried to get them into court under RICO as part of some game industry mafia arranged against him which, having met Gabe, is like waving a red bedsheet at a bull.

And Phelps---well, I keep hoping that someday, when he shows up to annoy the folks attending at some funeral, they treat him to the view that Molly Ivins said the Klan got the last time they marched in her neighborhood. That's guaranteed to preempt any onscreen time for him.

One of my co-workers told me last year of the time one of his buddies incurred the wrath of someone who felt that a specific parking spot was his and pulled out a gun. My co-worker's buddy immediately slapped it out of his hand and picked it up. Good thing for the gun owner that the other person was a law-abiding Marine.

Susan @ 59... The Court's decision doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Bruce Cohen @ 70

As someone who has been around firearms for a good portion of his life[1], I know *exactly* what you're talking about: people who couldn't get the concept of range safety drilled into their head with a Craftsman.

But again, would the body count be more or less in that situation? A lot of people seem to think that you would have the 30+ dead people *AND* collateral damage. Is that true (or - at least - plausible)?

[update] I just read "The Infamous Brad"s blog. I dunno whether he's right or not, but he's at least the first person I've seen that tried to make an argument, rather than state it as fact.

[1] son of a Marine, lived in Idaho for ~ 15 years, currently working for an outdoor outfitting company in Nebraska. On the other hand, I didn't *own* any firearm until very recently. I.e., I am familiar with them, but not a "gun nut" (whatever that means).

Lexica @ 71

I think he's exaggerating a little when he says that no other outcomes are possible, but I think he's correct that those are the most likely outcomes. Firing a weapon at a human being is fundamentally different for most people* than firing at a target, or even at a game animal. Add to this what's often called "the fog of war", meaning people are screaming and flailing around and nobody knows what the hell is going on, and you have a recipe for either not seeing the killer in time to shoot, or for shooting someone else in the confusion.

And that's one of the reasons why this is not the same situation as Flight 93: they knew what was happening, had an essentially static situation to deal with, knew where the enemy was, and, most important, had time to think the situation through and plan their actions.

And even ignoring all that, there's something called "buck fever", where adrenalin can make a normally good marksman miss an easy shot, or shoot the wrong thing even when there isn't any confusion.

Let's put it this way: I wouldn't trust many people, including myself, and including a lot of the soldiers I served with in Vietnam to handle a gun well in that situation. A young vet recently back from Iraq would be a different story, but most of them aren't going to be using the G.I Bill for some time yet.

Oh, and if you want to see what a vet thinks of the way that vets might handle such situations, read some of David Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories. Drake was in Vietnam; he's not thrilled with the habits combat leaves you with.

* By definition a sociopath won't feel this way, but then most people sitting in a classroom during an amoker event aren't sociopaths.

David Bishop @ 76

But again, would the body count be more or less in that situation? A lot of people seem to think that you would have the 30+ dead people *AND* collateral damage. Is that true (or - at least - plausible)?

It's certainly plausible, see post #77 for details.

Funny, I haven't fired a gun since I left the Army, and wouldn't really want to if I could avoid it. But the one person I immediately think of when I consider these situations is a lady I worked with in the 80's who was a target shooter. She's never been in combat to my knowledge, but she knows weapons, and is one of the coolest people in a tight spot I've ever met. On the other hand, as just about everybody says, you never can know until you're in the position.

David Bishop, let's say, for argument's sake, that several of the people in a classroom are armed when a man with an automatic rifle walks in. Scenario One: he kills 30 people. Scenario Two: three people shoot, bullets fly, the gunman (who is wearing Kevlar) ducks back out the door and heads for another classroom, leaving X number of wounded or dead. Some of them are wounded (or dead) with bullets from their classmates' guns. Meanwhile, down the hall in the French class, people are dying...

Didn't happen. Could have happened. In fact, there's no way to know what would have happened if there had been more guns and a bunch of terrified amateurs shooting them. But the odds on it being "good" (for some value of "good") seem pretty small to me.

I can imagine the emotions of the well-meaning student with the gun who tried to shoot the gunman, missed, and ended up killing the girl in the chair next to his.

About Fred Phelps...I saw a video recently of the Westboro Baptist Church singing (to the tune of "We Are the World") "God Hates the World." Yes, indeed. "God hates the world/and all its people..."

These people worship CTHULHU. They think everyone's going to Hell, and they want to be first. And you know, I hope they get their way—with regard only to their own postanimate destination, I hasten to add.

David 76: I had a conversation with someone once who claimed that he would have no problem with guns and ammo being sold out of vending machines in high school cafeterias (brought up by me as I tried to find an anti-gun control position too extreme for him, and failed). He is a gun nut.

He's not the only thing that qualifies, of course. The line is somewhere between him and the careful, responsible gun owner who keeps hir guns unloaded, safetied, and locked up when not in use, and who can't imagine why s/he, a civilian, could possibly want to own an automatic weapon of any kind. The latter person is not, in my view, a gun nut.

I won't try to define the boundary (I agree with Patrick on the usefulness of such things). But I will say this: gun nuttery is in the eye of the beholder. There are those who would tag me with the label because I have fired guns in my live AND enjoyed it, despite the fact that I have never owned a gun, and my enjoyment of firing my friend's guns scared the hell out of me. And there are people...like the gentleman I mentioned above. He doesn't consider himself a gun nut; nonetheless, if the term has any meaning at all, he's what it means.

There's no place outdoors within 5 miles of where I live where firing a gun would be anything other than a deeply antisocial act. Someone who's lived in a rural environment his entire life would think that not having a gun is crazy, and if I lived where you could fire a gun level at a height of 6 feet and have any chance it wouldn't strike a house and probably a person, I might agree.

It's impractical to live in Montana without a car. It's almost impossible to live in Hoboken WITH one!

So it goes.

Joan #63

"Do we want profs with guns.."

A listserve I am on was discussing self defense for female professionals last year and the topic of arming themselves came up. I wrote a pretty comprehensive response about reality that I would be willing to share with anyone who would be interested. email Jim0928@gmail.com

If everyone on every campus carried a gun, every single conflict would have the potential to turn deadly in seconds. So instead of an occasional, horribly deadly gun rampage, we'd have frequent, mildly deadly gun rampages, and pistols at dawn on the quads.

#82:

[triumphalist con suite libertarian]
Yes, but everyone would be polite!
[/triumphalist con suite libertarian]

#71 Lexica,

I don't know if I am treading on thin thread ice here since I am new to this site but as I mentioned above I wrote on the topic of armed amateurs last year when some female attorneys who do family law were concerned about some incidents of violence and wondered if they should buy guns just in case. Since I DO know what it is like to face another human being with a gun in my hand I wrote this. It is long and , as I say, if this transgresses please be gentle when you whack me.

Or you can just ignore the post.

Or Teresa can moderate me.

______________________________________

Subject: Guns in the Office

If you intend to get a carry permit and pack heat for self protection you should keep several things close to mind:

1. Unless you have invested the time and money to be well trained in the defensive use of a handgun don't carry one.

2. Unless you are willing to spend the money and time to go to the range and fire your weapon at least monthly and at least a box of ammo at that time, don't carry one.

3. Unless you are certain that you have the emotional and psychological ability to shoot another human being dead, don't carry one. Do not count on "brandishing" the weapon to frighten the other party into submission - it is far more likely to dramatically increase the level of violence. Do not even consider "shooting to injure". Unless you are willing to put two rounds, center of mass, into the other person and kill him (usually) dead you are far more likely to end up the dead or grievously injured one.

4. A handgun is not a magic wand. Displaying it will not cast a spell of caution or calmness on the various parties. A loaded weapon makes people crazy - the person at which it is aimed, the persons who are witnesses, and often the person who is holding it.

5. Unless you are willing to purchase and practice with a handgun that is large enough and packs a sufficient punch to put an attacker down and down now, don't carry one. In the early 70's a female student at [University] was in her apartment with her daughter when an attacker burst through the door. She had a .22 pistol and shot him 4 or 5 times. He had a .45 and shot her once. He was arrested at the hospital. She was dead.

There are lots of sources of good advice on combination of caliber, proper ammo, and frame size for control.

What is comes down to is that there is no way to prepare for the first time you point a loaded weapon at an identifiable human being and have to pull the trigger. The reason the military does repetitive, mind numbing, training is to try and ingrain the muscle memory and develop the reflexes so that brain does NOT interfere because if you give it a vote it will pause and then it is too late. Soldiers call the enemy by racial or ethnic names to depersonalize them so that they don't have to think about the fact that they are killing other people with mothers, fathers, kids, wives, and families. Troops assigned to Special Operations forces or Delta Force fire hundreds of rounds a month because in their job they have to be able to make a split second decision on whether the human in their sights is a target or a hostage or innocent.

The passive defensive measures discussed herein are excellent approaches and will be far more effective in provding security than a sign that says "This family law attorney is protected by Smith & Wesson".

When I was a young Marine we lived in southern Cal and one night about 2 am my wife said that she had heard a sound in the garage. I scoffed of course (husbandly response #1) but then I heard the sliding door of the VW van. There WAS someone in the garage. I got up and sneaked to the garage door and peeked - the dome light was one. Heart beat at 120, adreneline everywhere. As I whispered for my wife to call the cops I saw an arm - a little arm. A 5 y/o girl's arm! I stormed out into the garage to confront my little daughter and as I demanded an explanation she sobbed that she couldn't find her bunny rabbit and was looking in the car.

I had numerous weapons in the house - all locked up. After that I asked myself - "If I had had a weapon quickly available would I have gotten it and had it ready?" My answer was "yes". And then I realized that if I had I would have been confronting my little girl with a .357 in my hand. Accordingly I have never kept a weapon out of the safe in the house.

Given my background I obviously am not an anti-gun crusader. I believe, however, that the decision to carry a weapon in the office or on the street places an enormous responsibility upon the bearer to obtain excellent training, to commit to frequent practice and refresher training, to choose a weapon ideally suited for you and the purpose, and to stare into the mirror and ask yourself if you could really use it - and if you would make its use a truly last resort.

If you shoot and kill someone in the office you are not going to be celebrated as "Annie Oakley" and carried around the Family Law convention on a sedan chair. You are going to go to a private place and vomit until you don't think you will ever be able to stand up straight again.

I've got two more words for those who want to arm students.

Floor Party.

Like it or not alcohol is a big part of college life. It's just not a good idea to mix the two.

Old Jarhead @84,

I think that's a well-written comment, thanks.

As to the chance of 'transgression', what's to transgress? (the only 'transgression' I can see is the suggestion that our hosts would "whack" at a comment. Our hosts have that calm and powerful self-control that comes from long experience online*.)

It's good that your comment is longer, because otherwise you'd have skipped one or more of your background, your experiences, your disclaimers, or your full 5 points. All of which were good to read.

----
* I've been a long-time reader and commenter here. what I see is that (or check out the threads on moderation):
1. if a comment is pure spam, it gets deleted. if a comment is pure troll, it gets disemvoweled.
2. if a comment has both a personal attack and a section with reasonable writing, often just the personal attack part gets disemvoweled.
3. if a comment is highly snarky to the point of sounding trolling or personal-attackish, our hosts (or other commenters) will often suggest changing the tone.

i.e. the overall assumption is that we all are reasonable, and that while we are capable of a short slip into unthinkingness, a reminder ought to bring us back.

Xopher @ 80: If (according to Phelps) God hates all the people, why do Phelps&Co. focus on gays? I suppose GodHatesFags.com is... well, catchier to people of a certain mindset than GodHatesPeople.com (hmm, it's been registered) or GodHatesEveryone.com (huh, so has that one).

Vengeance against a country by sending a nut to slaughter a bunch of innocent people at a school, eh? Y'know, I'm agnostic; I don't have any significant faith about the existence/non-existence of a deity. But I'd like to think that if there is a deity, He/She/It at least has better aim than that.

I think a lot of the reaching after "but what if the students were armed?" nonsense -- it is nonsense, reactive fire from in a crowd, with no psych prep and no warning? There might be someone on Earth who could do that effectively, if they trained hard every day, but I wouldn't bet any of my own money on it -- is a hope for better choices; surely there's a better choice than to die?

Surely there were better choices than the one the murder took, too, and I would bet my own money that he flat couldn't see those.

It's hard to see your real choices, the ones you've got somewhere outside how you construct the scope of the possible in your head; it's harder to do it on short notice and in fear of your life. Harder still when pretty much all of the choices you've got are bad, and nothing much in your life has prepared you for the idea that you might have to cope with someone trying to kill you for no reason at all.

Did anybody try to talk to the guy? (and yes, that has worked in other times and places.) Don't know, but it might have worked.

Collapsed choice space, and a tons of money and power going into keeping choice spaces collapsed -- that's what, after all, gay marriage and women's sufferage and freeing slaves were about, as arguments; when and where it's legitimate to use power to make some choices inaccessible -- aren't good things. One of the reasons is that the more people who don't see any choice in their life, the more people who have the choices of their lives taken away.

Old Jarhead 84: Thank you for that. That's excellent, informative, and helpful. Quotable, even.

Old Jarhead @ 84

Not a transgression, by my lights that was an informative and thoughtful posting. What's needed in discussions like this one is exactly this sort of posting, giving the rest of us the benefit of experience few have.

And believe me, I'm tired of hearing all the jabber about guns from people who've never held one, let alone fired one. There's not much of that here at ML, but there's enough extra out there to make up for that.

Also, what Kathryn from Sunnyvale said.

Old Jarhead @84, in my opinion your comment is full of useful experience and opinion. I've heard others who were/are in the military or police forces say similar things, but it's a bit second hand when I say "I know this guy who says...." Better to hear it from the guy himself.

And to speak for myself, a few years ago I was suffering from severe anxiety, taking the form of a phobia of home invasions. I wasn't sleeping at night at all, on edge from every noise. About 3 AM one night, terrified and exhausted, I started thinking that I should buy a gun to keep by my bedside.

At this point I realized that if I had a gun in my house, especially one kept loaded and not locked up, I would likely never sleep again. My problem wasn't that I needed a gun to magically make me safe. My problem was that despite the fact that I was safe, I never felt safe. Carrying a gun wouldn't change that. Seeking treatment for the anxiety did.

On some level I think this becomes a lot of people's problem after incidents like this one. For me, my phobia started after the shootings at Columbine; I was in high school at the time and felt like I couldn't take my safety for granted anywhere any more, even in my own bedroom. I think a lot of people are seeking something that could make them feel safe again. Some people think guns are the answer.

It's the same reason we see security theater; it's the same reason people are willing to hand over so much in the name of "security" after a terrorist attack.

Guns are tools; as Old Jarhead says, they're not magic wands.

#88: The guy was approached by several teachers, referred to counseling, recieved a psychiatric evaluation after harassing female students . . . he had plenty of choices and opportunities to get help. There is an account by one of his teachers up on Salon.

I suspect he was a sociopath incapable of asking for help. The rantings he sent to NBC suggest a paranoid, narcissistic weenie with an immense chip on his shoulder, wrapped up in a dark adolescent internal drama."You forced me to do this! My blood is on your hands!" Sheesh!

There are some people who won't be helped with a little chat. "Won't be" as in "refuse to be." He needed to have help thrust upon him.

* * *

Oh, cripes. How long until this miserable situation gets mined for a Law and Order episode.

Old Jarhead #84: don't leave us in suspense -- did your daughter find her bunny rabbit?

Guns on campus?

Good lord, no. Any one who knows me, even a little, would shudder at the thought of me even handling a gun -- there's a reason I don't drive, ya know. ("Which end is the one you point? . . .")

When I think about the various chemicals available on my campus, I really really don't like the idea of armed, even well trained and armed, folk around a number of locations on campus. Bullets and various substances are Very Very Bad Ideas, and there's a lot of such substances on campus.

We've had problems, more than once, with trained police officers using guns and tasers far far too willingly. I hate to think of some of my peers, never mind faculty and undergrads, being armed.

Very very bad idea.

Oh my, what a party!

1) The thing any pro-cause group tends to forget (as PNH has said consistently here over the past couple years about various political measures) is that the people who will take your advice are not the people you want following it.

1.5) So, as with a draft, the only effective gun-carry rule would be a 100% mandatory "Everyone must carry a gun" rule.

2) As previously noted here: arming the underage, stressed, argumentative, depressed, angst-ridden, and often suicidal-prone adolescents on campus? Oh yeah, that's a smart idea.

2.5) Only arm the teachers. Yup, that's much better. Assuming the psycho knows how to shoot, and bearing in mind most classrooms have windows by the entrance, what stops the psycho from shooting what he knows is the only armed person in the room -- the teacher -- from the hallway outside the room? And now he's got another gun.

3) Yes, also friendly fire, cross fire, and ricochets, but wait, there's more.
Between 1/4 and 1/2 of the students will be tired of carrying their gun -- they haven't needed it all year, they're exhausted, running late, and so forth. But there will be nearly 100% of the student body carrying after the incident because now they "need" the gun. And over the next week how many people will be shot for carrying baseball bats, javelins, brooms and other devices that "look like" a weapon to a paranoid and panicked student? How many shot for reaching into a jacket for a pen, or countless similar "I thought he had a gun" concepts?

Graydon@#45:

So, what, the process is something like "No one here gives me any respect. I'll prove I'm strong by killing them."?

Cuz, um... that lets me see the process, I suppose, but still not understand it. It's hard to prove something to someone who is dead. I understand people starting bar brawls or one-on-one fights with that sort of logic, but not the "let's massacre everything in sight" part. Conquest to prove one's might, in other words, is fully within my ability to understand, whereas random killing is not.

If I'm still missing something, chalk it up to my being female and try smaller words? :)

Tina @ #96,

I think it is more like "nobody respects me or pays any attention to me, but this time they will pay attention."

It works too - we're all here talking about this kid, after all.

Hiya, Old Jarhead. Welcome.

To get an idea of the attitudes by various of us toward firearms, you might visit this older post.

Nowadays it's hard to believe, but that was the first time a Making Light post got more than 100 comments.

IMHO, it's a bad idea to change policy based on outliers. News is usually news because it's unusual; if it's commonplace, it isn't news but it's more likely to affect people. (News can also be news because it throws into relief a previously unrecognized larger problem.)

Getting killed by spree shooters or terrorists is news. Dying in a car accident or in a domestic incident isn't, usually. The not-news is what we should be trying to fix, not the news.

I also believe that stalking on college campuses falls into the "not-news so we should do something about it", but that may be bias from personal experience.

Tina @ 96:

I think it's also a matter of having nothing left to lose and therefore no reason to control/restrain oneself.

It's kind of a psychological/adrenaline vicious circle:
No one wants to be stuck on bottom, and as social creatures we require belonging to some society.
We can manage (somewhat) if one of these is taken away, but when denied opportunity for change or improvement, and isolated from the community group we start to go nuts.
Being stuck at the bottom generates frustration, which leads to anger;
with no one else to speak to, there is no outlet for these feelings, so it is internalized, and amplifies itself;
meanwhile, as the situation does not change, more stressors are imposed externally;
repeat until reach containment failure.

Pretty much each incident makes the person feel more isolated, and he eventually becomes convinced everyone is actively acting against him, which ratchets up the stress further, and makes it personal.
This gradually morphs into a need to strike back at the persecutors who are causing this anger and frustration.

The thought of college students carrying firearms on campus gives me the willies. Especially with finals coming up.

The thought of college students carrying firearms on campus gives me the willies.

I believe it would have been in 1968, by most standards a considerably kindler gentler era, that one of my suitemates took offense at another's habit of going out for the day while leaving his radio on. Party A found Party B's reaction amusing.

I was the only other resident in the suite the day Party B threw a chair out the (unopened) lounge window.

For some reason Fragano's comment made me picture that situation with a gun added. I wish it hadn't.

I've never been frightened of my students, but if I knew they were bringing guns to class I'd quit.

Re: Phelps et al.: Xopher (@80) is right. These people believe in a deity who personally sends a gunman to shoot up a campus, who personally sends hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and tornadoes to kill people and destroy cities, who personally oversees the condemnation and everlasting torment of pretty much every soul on this planet and enjoys it--and they worship that deity.

#99 Fungi:

That's the comment that came to my mind, too. I have a hard time believing the situation wouldn't have been better in this specific case, had 5% of the students been carrying guns. But mass shootings are so incredibly rare, that almost anything you do to address their risks will cost more than it's worth. And if 5% of people were carrying, day in and day out, there would be way more accidents, and rare but nasty fistfights morphing into gunfights.

The same holds true of mechanisms for detecting and treating/locking up possible mass shooters. They're so rare, almost anything you do short of locking only violent felons and violent crazies up (what we do now) will end up catching far more people who weren't going to do this. You occasionally hear of some high school kid expelled or put into counseling for a weird violent story he wrote, or a disturbing picture--this is about what you'd expect, and it's of a piece with the stories of people with funny-sounding names getting hassled at airports.

There are a lot of common elements of mass-shootings and terrorism--in both cases, they're so rare that it's hard to accumulate data to predict them, and hard for any defense to make sense in risk analysis terms.

#101, #103:

I go to a school that was shut down for the day after school admin consulted with the police and the FBI over a message posted to a discussion board. I feel sick to my stomach.

There's a painful irony in some of the posts in this thread, given the starting theme.

Aconite @ 104

and they worship that deity.

Well, of course they worship such a deity. It scares them absolutely shitless, and they hope that if they kiss its ass with sufficient fervor maybe it will leave them alive for awhile.

They've forgotten the old joke with the punchline, "You, I'm going to let you live."

albatross,

You occasionally hear of some high school kid expelled or put into counseling for a weird violent story he wrote, or a disturbing picture--this is about what you'd expect, and it's of a piece with the stories of people with funny-sounding names getting hassled at airports.

it's really lousy, but being at such a remove from the events (i don't know anyone who has gone to virginia tech, or know anyone personally who knows someone, that i know of), my first thought upon hearing of the shootings was "i wonder how the folks in power will use this to abuse civil liberties or persecute a group, & which ones will they abuse or persecute?"

& so far, it seems like it'll be people who write "antisocial" fiction.*

i mean, i wish that even half the times some news head opined that the killer's "graphic, profanity-laced fiction" should have been a warning about his violent tendencies, he/she would bother to add "also women on two separate occasions reported him to police for stalking."

*the killer's disturbedness probably did come through in his fiction, as evidenced by the professor who was alarmed enough to pull him out of class & tutor him one-on-one. i think the professor was probably right to have done so, & that was the most the professor could/should have done.

1. Jarhead, that was an excellent comment. Thank you for posting it. My sole objection was that it had a bunch of out-of-place line returns in it. I fixed them.

I'd had a few episodes of being around guns being fired, but the old post Jim pointed you to was when I made my first real acquaintance with guns. I'm an editor. Guns turn up all the time in novels. I wanted to get a better sense of them.

I also wanted to dispel that weird magical charge I felt guns had. That firing range we went to in Manchester will rent you just about anything, from Thompson submachine guns and 19th C. dueling pistols (or replicas thereof) to guns that looked like Chuck Jones designed them. It literally made me dizzy. The feeling hasn't recurred on subsequent visits, so I guess familiarization worked.

I still have a lot of respect and wariness where guns are concerned, but now they don't scare me nearly as much as people who think guns will do magic things. I used to know a guy who worked at Disneyland in the summers during high school, and he told me about what em