I been watching this for the last hour on News 24. The Count is 22 now and they think there was more than 1 person ivolved in the shooting. There is also a bomb scare going on there which is effecting the police staging area. Its sad and scary, but im so glad this country has a ban on guns and are not freely available in the UK.
UPDATE: At least 31 dead and 10 injured. Apparently, there has been reports of "a" gunman having taken his own life with self inflicted gunshot wounds ("a", as the number of gunmen has been unconfirmed). This is awful news. A uni campus is not a warzone.
You know they have to protect themselve against those crazy foreigners, because you know the are going to invade the US any second now
The right to bear arms is part of the constitution. I'm not living in the US, but I support that right none the less. Here we have the same ban on firearms as in the UK, so if a guy sticks a gun in my face, I have nothing I can do.
Just because it's in the constitution doesn't make it right. If there was a clause saying it was legal to have sex with penguins would you want that to remain? To me, that's how relevant the 2nd amendment is in modern society.
Congraduations! within 5 posts you turned this thread into "Here is another thing wrong with the US." Bravo....... Having two brothers that graduated from VT last year my heart goes out to everyone involved.
That's not entirely true, but the 2nd amendment has a lot to answer for. I'd like to reiterate your sentiments.
Such a tragedy Dunblane and Hungerford still happened didn't they, even without the right to bear arms (the former incident was very preventable had the police actually obeyed their own guidelines on the sort of person they issue a firearms license too ). Personally I don't even think this sort of tragic event is necessarily a problem of gun ownership per se - look at Switzerland for example, and I believe Canada has roughly comparable rates of firearms ownership per person to the US but nothing like the same rate of gun related crime. The US differs from these two states though in that it suffers rather more from urban deprivation and drugs, which tend to cause more problems with crime in general, and having guns around areas blighted by such social problems is always going to be troublesome. However this particular type of incident is somewhat different I feel from a typical gun crime, and somewhat more difficult to consider a solution for - mentally unstable individuals can always find a way to cause havoc (this incident is one that that springs to mind, given it occured less than 5 minutes walk from my house, where my mum used to work). Though one could argue that if he'd had a pistol he would have killed rather than just injured.... The constitutional right to bear arms is all well and good, and was put in with noble purpose - but the idea of a well organised and heavily regulated militia I believe it set out to allow is a far cry from a relatively blase attitude to firearms ownership which some of what I've read seems to suggest exists amongst some members of the US gun owning fraternity. Yes, its in the constitution, but with rights come responsibilities, and at the moment I feel the balance of the legal requirements with regards to gun ownership in the US concentrates on providing the right without ensuring such guns are *always* stored and used in an adequate and responsible manner. Before I'm flamed for this as being 'anti-US' or not understanding, I have family who are American citizens (in NC and TN), and my dad actually owns a gun himself (thankfully quite difficult to this side of the pond these days), so I hope I'm able to discuss this subject fairly without my thoughts being dismissed as mere hysteria or anti-americanism
There was one gunman, 30 students killed, and the gunman commited suicide. This is a very sasd case, and it just shows how violence seems to be the subject taking over people's lives. as said earlier, this a university. A good one as well.
They happen, but not as often or as devastatingly. It is very true that a nutter will find a way to hurt people, but it does not need to be made easy for him.
Sick of Europeans looking down on you? Wow, you seriously are paranoid, no one is looking down on you or your fellow Americans, so get a grip please. Some of us just believe the "right to bear arms" doesn't help the situation. We have had our share of incidents over here too, but after Dunblane handguns were banned and so far we have not seen a repeat. Yes there are shootings and you will never get rid of every gun, but the less there are the better. edit : have a look at this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres and consider if the gun laws in the US are a contributing factor, they may or may not be, but I'll let the figures speak for themselves.
Last I heard the death toll was 33 I'm glad this sort of thing doesn't happen over here (yet), but my condolences to all who have lost someone in this incident
If you wish, we can keep this thread as a memorial to those who lost their lives in this tragedy today, and start a new thread to discuss whether the gun laws in the US are a contributing factor in the many school shootings in comparison to the relatively low number in other countries. Would these deaths have occurred if over the decades guns hadn't been so easy to obtain? As you say there will be many factors that fully contribute to such events which could be further explored in the discussion.
the right to bear arms has jack **** to do with controlling crime. it has everything to do with controlling government. I'll leave it at that. we don't know anything about what happened today. so stfu until we know the facts.
It really comes down to the individual state pf mind in the end. ie, you could give a machine gun to a thousand stable sane people and the chance of there being a massacre is greatly reduced compared to giving a thousand lunatics machine guns. Then again, if you don't give them those guns the chance reduced dramatically but there is still the chance that one of those lunatics had a gun hidden on his person from the start. Personally, I don't believe in the right to bear arms, but thats my opinion. It definately wouldn't work in the UK so thats just my perspective. oh and remember this is a thread full of opinions and different perspectives so don't go jumping to the conclusion that the person with an opinion is just saying it to piss you off.
im ashamed to say that the gunman was asain.... really sad, and stupid. why would someone just kill people like that?? i bet this will be blamed on videogames...
While it probably made it easier, I think that if the gunman wanted to commit mass-murder, he would have still found a way to do it if guns were illegal. I think it's sad that some people will purely think of this as an opportunity to push their viewpoints forward (Jack Thompson, I'm looking at you). Deepest condolences to those affected by this tragedy.
Yeah? Ok... How? You show me some comparable incidents where 30+ people were murdered without guns, explosives or poisons... You could always crash a plane into a skyscraper, but let's face it - that was hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event. If somebody does want to kill a whole load of people, it *is* possible without guns; it's just a lot more difficult. And even if guns were banned in the US, there would still be gun crime for years afterwards, because there are many ways to get guns from other sources and there are millions of guns floating about. But by restricting guns (& explosives and poisons) you are making it harder for would-be murderers to to gain the means to kill people. One argument I have heard was that if all the students were armed, the gunman would have been shot (in self-defence) before he could kill 30+ people. This may be the case, but how many innocents would have been shot by other innocents trying to defend themselves. Plus there are a huge number of gun related deaths where shots were fired in the heat of the moment; in a domestic argument perhaps, or where young gang members are 'posturing'. How many thousands of deaths could be saved if these people didn't routinely have guns? How many prisoners are there in the US jails who have 20+ years to rue the moment where they lost their heads - just for an instant. And it's not just about gun ownership. Not only do many Americans feel it is right to own guns, but they feel it is right to use them. And this is the difference between the US and many other gun-owning nations. People don't fear guns enough, and are more than happy to carry & use them. Personally, I think that only specialist Armed Response units in the UK should be trained to handle guns - I don't want to see plods on the beat routinely armed. But fair enough, many other nations have armed police without too many problems. So I don't see why the US can't simply rely on these guys to do their jobs. OK, there are questions being raised in Virginia about the response of the campus police to the first incident, but having all the students tooled up (as has been suggested) wouldn't have been much of a help. And as to the complaints that this is yet another bash-the-US thread, I'd disagree. It's certainly a bash-the-US's-gun-control-policy though. And if it tires you, don't worry - as soon as people stop going postal with lots of guns, the issue will slip quietly into the background once again.
