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Virginia Tech: The Day After The Day After
See previous: At least 32 dead in Virginia Tech rampage; Anti-gunners seize the moment before bodies cold, Virginia Tech: The Day After.
The victims aren't even in the ground yet and already the moonbats are screeching for tighter restrictions on gun ownership. Isn't once enough? Now that the world knows that American college students aren't allowed to defend themselves, how long will it be till the jihadis put on a show that makes Virginia Tech look like a Sunday picnic in the park by comparison? I saw the line in someone's comment section "We are all first-responders now." It's time to take that attitude, not make the situation worse.
Below the fold:
- Gone but not forgotten: the victims;
- Jules Crittenden: Killer Reax;
- Wanted: A culture of self-defense;
- Activists possum a ride on VA Tech tragedy
- FBI Examining Package Sent By Virginia Tech Gunman;
Court Records Show Killer Ruled a Danger in 2005
- Was Cho schizophrenic, “mean,” or both? Update: NBC receives material mailed by Cho between shootings; marked 9:01 a.m. Monday; Update: Video added
- A Culture of Passivity
- Down the Memory Hole...
- People don't stop killers. People with guns do
- Bad Day, America? Let Us Make It Worse
- System Failed Va Tech Students
- Massacre and mental illness
- Should NBC Have Aired The Cho Package?
- Video: Bill O on the gun grabbers’ hypocrisy
- Video: Eisner says it’s time to get the public “emotional” about gun control
- Video: Carolyn McCarthy doesn’t understand her own gun-control legislation
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Gone but not forgotten: the victims.
The Wizbang crew has assembled what they say is the first complete list of the Virginia Tech victims to appear anywhere. Click here.
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Jules Crittenden: Killer Reax
I'm getting off to a real slow start today due to some health issues. Go check out Jules's roundup and I'll try to get rolling on mine as soon as I can.
*** Wanted: A culture of self-defense
Michelle Malkin
There's no polite way or time to say it: American college and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregrated dorms, politically correct academic departments, and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions—while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).
Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.
And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.
As news was breaking about the carnage at Virginia Tech, a reader e-mailed me a news story from last January. State legislators in Virginia had attempted to pass a bill that would have eased handgun restrictions on college campuses. Opposed by outspoken, anti-gun activists and Virginia Tech administrators, that bill failed.
Is it too early to ask: "What if?" What if that bill had passed? What if just one student in one of those classrooms had been in lawful possession of a concealed weapon for the purpose of self-defense?
If it wasn't too early for Keystone Katie Couric to be jumping all over campus security yesterday for what they woulda/coulda/shoulda done in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and if it isn't too early for the New York Times editorial board to be publishing its knee-jerk call for more gun control, it darned well isn't too early for me to raise questions about how the unrepentant anti-gun lobbying of college officials may have put students at risk. ...
*** Activists possum a ride on VA Tech tragedy
Posted By Uncle Jimbo
As all the usual suspects on both sides of our ongoing arguments about guns claim VA Tech validates either gun control or concealed carry, we even get the race-baiting of the victim classes trying to possum a ride on the issue. Let's dispense with the racism angle first. Said Virginia Tech student Lyu Boaz, a Korean-American. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”
Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them....
No a lot of Arabs weren't attacked after 9/11, almost none were. Actually if anyone had a beef it was Sikhs, a few of whom got attacked because of their head wraps. But despite the caterwauling of CAIR, Arabs in America may have gotten some dirty looks but they fared much better than Americans in Arab countries have.
That is one of the biggest problems with our academic culture. It is based largely on identity politics and protected victim classes. That includes basically everyone but white males, who are expected to be repentant for sins they had no connections to, but the rest are simply not to be held responsible for their actions, achievements or lack thereof. Michelle Malkin, who has had her victim class card pulled for heresy, ties that theme together with the attendant lack of responsibility for their own safety or well-being.
[...]
Our top analyst Grim has taken on the challenge of wargaming this scenario to see what effect an armed student or teacher may have had, or what other active options the trapped students could have employed. As usual his work is well worth reading....
*** FBI Examining Package Sent By Virginia Tech Gunman;
Court Records Show Killer Ruled a Danger in 2005
BLACKSBURG, Va. — Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui coldly paused during his deadly campus rampage Monday to pose for pictures and put together a package of documents he then sent to NBC News, FBI officials said.
One photo shows Cho angrily posing with a automatic gun in each outstretched black-gloved hand, dressed in a black shirt, tan ammo vest and a black backward baseball cap.
FBI sources told FOX News that a preliminary examination of the package shows the documents contain wording that is very similar to the notes that were reported to have been found in Cho's dorm room. One early theory is that Cho packaged and sent the same material.
FBI officials said they were concerned that NBC was not the only news organization to receive a package from Cho, but they have no evidence at this time that he sent anything to anyone else.
State police, meanwhile, revealed that in December, 2005, Cho was declared "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" and posed "an imminent danger," according to a temporary detention order issued by a Virginia district court.
Kim Preistap has more here.
*** Was Cho schizophrenic, “mean,” or both? Update: NBC receives material mailed by Cho between shootings; marked 9:01 a.m. Monday; Update: Video added
Allahpundit
There’s new information about him this morning but most of it is stuff we already know. The cops held a press conference to say that he stalked two women in 2005 and then got sent away to a mental hospital for a spell, which we learned last night from that bizarre CNN interview with his two former roommates. Meanwhile, the NYT has a scoop about the cops having initially misidentified the suspect in the first shooting as Emily Hilscher’s gun-aficionado boyfriend. If only the LA Times hadn’t had the same scoop hours earlier.
Here’s some genuinely new information, though, via ABC News. A forensic psychiatrist who’s been following the story says Cho’s behavior sounds familiar, and it goes way beyond depression: ...
*** A Culture of Passivity
"Protecting" our "children" at Virginia Tech.
By Mark Steyn
I haven’t weighed in yet on Virginia Tech — mainly because, in a saner world, it would not be the kind of incident one needed to have a partisan opinion on. But I was giving a couple of speeches in Minnesota yesterday and I was asked about it and found myself more and more disturbed by the tone of the coverage. I’m not sure I’m ready to go the full Derb but I think he’s closer to the reality of the situation than most. On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our “children” need to be “protected.”
Point one: They’re not “children.” The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.
Point two: The cost of a “protected” society of eternal “children” is too high. Every December 6th, my own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the “Montreal massacre,” the 14 female students of the Ecole Polytechnique murdered by Marc Lepine (born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you’d never know that from the press coverage). As I wrote up north a few years ago: ...
*** Down the Memory Hole...
By Ragnar Danneskjold, John Doe #4 (H/T: Michelle)
If you've been reading the papers and you have spotty knowledge of history, you might be forgiven for thinking that the shootings this week were the "worst mass murder in U.S. history." If you're a journalist with a lot on your plate, you may have forgotten the mass murder of September 11, 2001, which left over 3,000 dead. Then again, that was nearly six years ago & all.
The Savannah Morning News is pushing the "worst mass murder" line: Little is known about the shooter who killed 31 people and apparently wounded another 29 in the worst mass murder in U.S. history.
The San Jose Mercury News is selling the same story: When I awoke the next morning, the name of the perpetrator of the nation's worst mass murder was all over the news, and I had another reaction: Oh, no. He's Asian.
The Bradenton Herald: ...
Truth is, the Virginia Tech shooting rampage, while tragic, was not "the worst mass murder in U.S. history." It wasn't the "second worst mass murder in U.S. history," or even the third, or the fourth.
The 9/11 attacks (2,998 deaths), the Oklahoma City bombing (168 deaths), the HappyLand arson (87 deaths) and the Bath, Michigan bombing (45 deaths) all claimed more victims than the Virginia Tech shootings (32 deaths).
But, as Vinnie noted yesterday, those events don't fit neatly into the anti-gun political agenda, so they need to go down the memory hole, thereby leaving the Virginia Tech shootings as "the worst mass murder in U.S. history," with Charles Whitman's shooting rampage taking a close second.
*** People don't stop killers. People with guns do
Glenn Reynolds (H/T: Michelle)
On Monday, as the news of the Virginia Tech shootings was unfolding, I went into my advanced constitutional law seminar to find one of my students upset. My student, Tara Wyllie, has a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee, but she isn't allowed to have a weapon on campus. That left her feeling unsafe. "Why couldn't we meet off campus today?" she asked.
Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason: Like the University of Tennessee, where I teach, Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.
In The Roanoke Times last year - after another campus incident, when a dangerous escaped inmate was roaming the campus - Wiles wrote that, when his class was evacuated, "Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness. That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself."
Wiles reported that when he told a professor how he felt, the professor responded that she would have felt safer if he had had a gun, too.
What's more, she would have been safer. That's how I feel about my student (one of a few I know who have gun carry permits), as well. She's a responsible adult; I trust her not to use her gun improperly, and if something bad happened, I'd want her to be armed because I trust her to respond appropriately, making the rest of us safer.
Virginia Tech doesn't have that kind of trust in its students (or its faculty, for that matter). Neither does the University of Tennessee. Both think that by making their campuses "gun-free," they'll make people safer, when in fact they're only disarming the people who follow rules, law-abiding people who are no danger at all.
This merely ensures that the murderers have a free hand. If there were more responsible, armed people on campuses, mass murder would be harder. ...
*** Bad Day, America? Let Us Make It Worse
Pam M. (H/T: Lorie Byrd)
Tragedy hits America once again, this time with the heartbreaking shootings at Virginia Tech by a disturbed young man who obviously had lots of problems. And our international friends just can't wait to pile on. Here are some samples of Euroweenie reaction:
Times of London:
"Doubtless there will be a call to review the availability of firearms. The National Rifle Association's (NRA) response is predictable too. They will point out that events such as this are not carried out by a rifle-wielding member of a weekend militia. There is no doubt that access to rapid-action shotguns makes these events even more destructive but as we have seen with suicide bombers, who are closer to spree killers than is often realized, if a person really wants to take their own life and kill others in doing so it is exceptionally difficult to prevent it."
Le Figaro (France):
"Contrary to what one would imagine, this backward stance is not something left over from the Wild West. It goes back to the creation of the United States and the War of Independence against the English. ... While most states have issued laws designed to control the sale of arms, the NRA ensures they remain inefficient or are not applied. Strongly linked to the conservative fringe of the Republican Party, the NRA spent $400,000 a day to prevent the election of the Democratic candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential elections ..."
Il Messaggero (Italy): ...
I myself received an e-mail from an English gent who was very upset about the shootings. After some back and forth, he told me, "America has a problem. You have a problem." Yes, and when America has a problem, do we receive any kind of sympathy? After 9/11, we did...for about a week. Everything else seems to be fair game.
When bombers attacked the London tube and bus system two years ago, the last thing on my mind would have been to write to an English blogger and start lambasting him for the ills in his country that could have led to such an atrocious act. (My first thought was for my dear friends Louis and Paula, as well as their friends Gavin and Susan, and was relieved when I knew they were not involved.) When bombs blew up commuters in Madrid, I was appalled. My fellow Americans and I rooted for the capture of these villains, and prayed for the families of the victims. But gosh, when tragedies happen in America, international fingers start pointing and tongues start wagging about our backward, violent culture, our horrendous legislation system, and how simply awful we are overall. Never could we match the bastions of culture that are Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc. ...
Frankly, I've had it. Britain's gun crime rate has been steadily climbing since private ownership of handguns was banned in 1997. Muslim "youths" run riot in France, injuring people and destroying property. And in 2002, a gunman in Germany killed 17 people at a school. But these things "only happen" in America.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Until the rest of the world suddenly becomes a crime-free utopia, I'd appreciate a little less America bashing. Leave us to tend to our dead without your pithy, self-righteous, self-important moralizing. Oh, and the next time you need sympathy? Ask your immediate neighbors. I'm fresh out.
While we're on the subject: Guns Down, Gun Crime Up In Britain
*** System Failed Va Tech Students
Dan Riehl
Update: It gets worse and this idiot will continue to haunt those he victimized: Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building Monday morning, Cho Seung-Hui sent NBC News a rambling communication and videos about his grievances, the network said Wednesday.
Mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui is now said to have mailed what's being called a manifesto to NBC prior to his entering the building for his second round of shootings. In a press conference it was suggested that the mailing contained various media, including video. NBC rightly shared it first with officials and no doubt will be releasing details as appropriate. MSNBC says it contained a lengthy diatribe, a disturbing multiple page rant and images.
As has been touched upon, ABC reports Cho was once ruled dangerous enough to be detained.
It's cliche to say people kill people, not guns - but this person was on the radar of authorities, mental health workers and the university and he was apparently released and left alone to plot and procure his guns. ...
While it may be unfair to start placing responsibility for some of this based on hindsight, clearly whatever official system in operation which dealt with Cho prior to the massacre didn't work.
Such systems likely need to be revised. That would seem a more prudent move than all this political talk of gun control. Gun control does not control the evil, or the insane. It would ultimately limit the rights of law abiding citizens, more than it would help prevent another tragedy like the horrible one at Virginia Tech.
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Massacre and mental illness
Michelle Malkin
If you haven't already read the December 2005 temporary detention order for VTech maniac Seung-Hui Cho, you should.
A source who works as a Special Justice in Virginia e-mailed me today: The relevant statutes are at Title 37.2 of the Virginia Code... ...As he was NOT involuntary hospitalized, the following report was not required to be made: 37.2-819. Order of involuntary admission forwarded to CCRE; firearm background check.
The clerk shall certify and forward forthwith to the Central Criminal Records Exchange, on a form provided by the Exchange, a copy of any order for involuntary admission to a facility. The copy of the form and the order shall be kept confidential in a separate file and used only to determine a person's eligibility to possess, purchase, or transfer a firearm.
Yes, if he had been "committed" he may never have been able to purchase a firearm.
Without more facts, I am not second guessing the decision of the Special Justice. Perhaps the code should be amended to require the report to be filed upon the finding of iminent danger to self or others, not just involuntary hospitalization.
Dr. Helen notes that the decision to release him is all too common: ...
*** Should NBC Have Aired The Cho Package?
Ed Morrissey
In the two-hour spell between the two groups of murders at Virginia Tech Monday, the murderer packaged pictures, videos, and a typed manifesto produced over the previous week and sent them off to NBC in New York. With a return address name of "A. Ishmael", Seung-hui Cho mailed his legacy to the wrong address and incorrect zip code, delaying the delivery by a full day, but succeeded in placing it in the hands of an organization that earns its living by reporting information.
Should NBC have published this material? So far, the commentariat appears opposed to both the decision to publish the material and the manner in which it was handled. Mona Charen says that NBC is feeding the next monster: NBC is doing something extremely stupid by running those photos the Virginia Tech shooter sent them. Are they crazy? This will encourage every publicity seeking loser in the world to do something similar to get himself on TV. Foolish.
Stephen Spruiell, also at The Corner, grants that some of the package could get aired in a responsible manner, but believes that NBC hasn't thought it through long enough: NBC News will reportedly air portions of a video it received from homicidal lunatic Cho Seung-Hui on its 6:30 p.m. broadcast, 15 minutes from now. I assume I share with many Americans a morbid curiosity about what's contained on that video. But NBC News is about to give Cho an audience of around 10 million people for his deranged rantings. What kind of message does this send to other isolated, disturbed and angry youths who entertain the same violent thoughts as Cho?
Ed Driscoll makes a good point when he points out that ...
Some other CQ posts I'd probably have linked earlier if I'd started the day off healthier:
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Just go watch 'em:
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