VA Tech Shooting: What can we possibly do?

[M-Dent]

How do you know that?

Witnessing stun gun demonstrations. Quite effective and not as stressful a weapon for a teacher to be trained to use in an emergency situation.

I’m certain you understand quite well that certain training and preparation can save lives. In a situation when your back is against the wall and there may be no place to run, you need to agressively react. I’d say even the passengers on Flight 93 took the correct action. Do what you can. The best you can. But having some basic skills certainly can improve your chances for survival.

 

[MikeWM]

Let me get this straight. You’re telling us we must buy the word of God? That it’s for sale, and we must sell our cloaks to buy it?

No. Jesus is saying the one is more important than the other, however, according to various commentators. The ‘sword’ - the Word of God - is even more important to have than the cloak on your back. The use of ‘sell/buy’ is one way of showing that. It’s not too hard to believe Jesus was speaking allegorically here, given that he did just that most of the rest of the time.

And can you see the word of God – because the Apostles showed Him two swords!

It’s reasonable to assume that the Apostles had missed the point entirely yet again, and Jesus’ ‘that is enough!’ is a ‘oh, you’ve missed the point yet again, but I don’t have the time to explain it now’. Read this one

professingprofessor.blogspot.com/2006/03/sword-talk.html

for example.

I’m not denying that you can interpret these four verses out of context as meaning just what you want it to mean. But in the context of the whole of the Gospels, I don’t believe it makes sense to take it literally.

Mike

 

[gilliam]

Interesting insite: According to U.S. News & World Report, Cho’s name would have been added to the NICS firearms background check database if the judge had ordered him committed when he was sent to a mental hospital in 2005. The fact that he ordered outpatient treatment instead kept Cho out of the system and made the later handgun purchases legal.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Witnessing stun gun demonstrations. Quite effective and not as stressful a weapon for a teacher to be trained to use in an emergency situation.

You’ve seen a stun gun used against a man armed with gun and determined to kill in a real life situation?

Let me point out that police officers who carry both firearms and stun guns do not reach for the stun gun when facing an opponent with a gun!

I’m certain you understand quite well that certain training and preparation can save lives. In a situation when your back is against the wall and there may be no place to run, you need to agressively react. I’d say even the passengers on Flight 93 took the correct action. Do what you can. The best you can. But having some basic skills certainly can improve your chances for survival.

Even better, have an effective weapon ready to hand.

I have studied many a disaster (and been in a few). It’s generally the case that poor planning – and that includes unrealistic assumptions – make disasters worse.

 

[Ender]

Time and time again when a state allows it’s citizens to carry concealed weapons, their violent crime rate drops significantly.

There’s all manner of possible factors. We all know that correlation doesn’t imply direct causation.

It is true that mere correlation doesn’t necessarily demonstrate causation but sometimes cause and effect are pretty easy to determine. Back in 1984 a passenger on a subway in New York City shot the four men who were trying to rob him. For the next week or so the incidence of subway muggings dropped precipitously as other ne’er-do-wells considered a new set of risk-reward scenarios.

[Granny scares off a mugger with a gun] …And then accidentally shoots herself in the foot, or shoots a passer-by in the excitement.

I read a lot about this being the likely result of armed citizens but I don’t read many accounts of it actually happening. We have a lot of people with guns but apparently not many incidents like the one you raise. I’m sure if they were happening we would all know about them. Conversely it is not all that difficult to cite numerous examples where armed citizens have successfully protected their own lives and the lives of others. The reality of the situation seems to be very different than your alarming portrayal suggests.

Ender

 

[thechrismyster]

PLEASE get the facts before bemoaning gun ownership and it’s mythical relation to increased violence…

gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-facts/4.1/GunFacts4-1-Print.pdf

or Click Here

---

more importantly…
the origins, all those who are in favor of outlawing guns… you’re right in line with the KKK. They were the first advocates of gun control. They thought blacks and minorities should not have any right to be armed… most gun laws in the US stem from racist thought…

gun control laws = racism

Before the Civil War ended, State “Slave Codes” prohibited slaves from owning guns. After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery was adopted and the Civil War ended in 1865, States persisted in prohibiting blacks, now freemen, from owning guns under laws renamed “Black Codes.” They did so on the basis that blacks were not citizens, and thus did not have the same rights, including the right to keep and bear arms protected in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as whites. This view was specifically articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford to uphold slavery.
The United States Congress overrode most portions of the Black Codes by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The legislative histories of both the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867, are replete with denunciations of those particular statutes that denied blacks equal access to firearms. [Kates, “Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment,” 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 256 (1983)] However, facially neutral disarming through economic means laws remain in effect.
After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1878, most States turned to “facially neutral” business or transaction taxes on handgun purchases. However, the intention of these laws was not neutral. An article in Virginia’s official university law review called for a “prohibitive tax…on the privilege” of selling handguns as a way of disarming “the son of Ham,” whose “cowardly practice of ‘toting’ guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime… Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.” [Comment, Carrying Concealed Weapons, 15 Va L. Reg. 391, 391-92 (1909); *George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal (GMU CR LJ), Vol. 2, No. 1, “Gun Control and Racism,” Stefan Tahmassebi, 1991, p. 75] Thus, many Southern States imposed high taxes or banned inexpensive guns so as to price blacks and poor whites out of the gun market.

 

[M-Dent]

Even better, have an effective weapon ready to hand.

I have studied many a disaster (and been in a few). It’s generally the case that poor planning – and that includes unrealistic assumptions – make disasters worse.

Vern, first I want to note I’m sincerley not arguing for the sake of arguing.

Isn’t designing and implementing a self-defense training program - in this case for teachers - showing some options of how to react in violent situations. Especially where police are unavailable at that moment better than none at all? Giving on something to rely on as opposed to complete panic.

In your experience do you see any “realistic” way to offer any self-defense training that could save some lives in worst case scenario’s as say School shootings?

 

[MikeWM]

It is true that mere correlation doesn’t necessarily demonstrate causation but sometimes cause and effect are pretty easy to determine. Back in 1984 a passenger on a subway in New York City shot the four men who were trying to rob him. For the next week or so the incidence of subway muggings dropped precipitously as other ne’er-do-wells considered a new set of risk-reward scenarios.

Oh, well of course, there is a ‘shock value’ when a tried-and-trusted technique seems no longer is safe to use to achieve our objective. We all have the same reaction there. Eventually we work a way through it. Criminals aren’t that different to the rest of us.

I read a lot about this being the likely result of armed citizens but I don’t read many accounts of it actually happening. We have a lot of people with guns but apparently not many incidents like the one you raise. I’m sure if they were happening we would all know about them.

Oh, quite possibly. I was just showing that having a gun didn’t necessarily lead to the best scenario. It is only fair of me to accept that in some situations, at least, having a gun for defence would result in a better outcome than not having one. That’s not in doubt.

Mike

 

[MikeWM]

Yet, I’d be scared if I was in a room w/ an untrained teacher with a .22 - nervously reacting like Barney Fife struggling for a bullet and in a panic blew the one out of the chamber at the class.

Of course. And the gun will have to be locked away somewhere - will a panicking teacher have time to find the keys, unlock the drawer and get the gun out and aim it, before the madman gets into the classroom? Sometimes, perhaps, but not always. And what happens when a teacher loses the keys, because someone or other will, sooner or later.

In any event, if the person who wants to massacre people knows all this, he’ll just go and massacre people when they won’t have a weapon to hand. In the gym for example, like Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane.

Mike

 

[vern_humphrey]

Vern, first I want to note I’m sincerley not arguing for the sake of arguing.

Isn’t designing and implementing a self-defense training program - in this case for teachers - showing some options of how to react in violent situations. Especially where police are unavailable at that moment better than none at all? Giving on something to rely on as opposed to complete panic.

In your experience do you see any “realistic” way to offer any self-defense training that could save some lives in worst case scenario’s as say School shootings?

The one-day course I took when I got my concealed carry permit in Virginia years ago – or the one I took for my Arkansas permit – strike me as good as any.

There are all sorts of things you can do in an emergency – if you live to do them. So the first level of defense is self-defense. That’s why I carry a gun, and that’s why most people carry one.

Beyond that, there should be a plan – based on a real event, not an imaginary one, or a composite of real events. The plan must be thoroughly understood by those charged with carrying it out, and there must be clearly assigned responsibilities.

For the plan to work, there must be communication – the people carged with carrying it out must know what’s happening.

Ideally, the teachers should be the key people – they should control their classes, defend their students, and keep them safe until help arrives. If some students are armed, so much the better.

 

[beckers]

I totally agree with you about privacy laws. Really, is there some reason the university could not have compelled him to get professional help on threat of expulsion from the dorm (considering the fire, the suicide threat and complaints of stalking)? Human pyschology is one place where the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it rule” does not apply; we need to fix what appears to be about to break before it does.

I use to work the housing department at a college campus. It is very difficult to get a student expelled. We had one student that even though the students had complained and staff knew that he acted 'werid" we could not do anything. Well until he attacked a fellow student in the hallway with a knife then the police could finally do something.

 

[Cat]

I don’t think it’s likely that the U.S. will become a nation of individually armed people anytime soon.

A month ago, I played piano for a high school musical. During the rehearsals, there were sawhorses that needed to be moved (they were part of the set).

Not even the boys, 16-18 year olds, could lift a sawhorse. The director had to assign two people to lift one sawhorse.

I realize that you don’t have to be physically strong to lift a gun, but I think that there has to be a certain mindset when someone owns a gun, a mental toughness, a willingess to endure discomfort in order to defend yourself and others.

I’m not sure that many of us have that mental toughness anymore. If it were there, I think those boys would have been ashamed of their physical weakness and started a weight-lifing regimen immediately so that by the time the play opened, they would have been capable of lifting a sawhorse.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I don’t think it’s likely that the U.S. will become a nation of individually armed people anytime soon.

In many cases we already are – there are hundreds of thousands of Virginians who have concealed carry licenses. Tragically, they just couldn’t carry on campus

A month ago, I played piano for a high school musical. During the rehearsals, there were sawhorses that needed to be moved (they were part of the set).

Not even the boys, 16-18 year olds, could lift a sawhorse. The director had to assign two people to lift one sawhorse.

I realize that you don’t have to be physically strong to lift a gun, but I think that there has to be a certain mindset when someone owns a gun, a mental toughness, a willingess to endure discomfort in order to defend yourself and others.

The problem is, you are extending an imaginary analysis of a small incident to embrace something entirely different. There are young Americans – only a year or two older than those boys you tell about – who engage in gun battles on a daily basis.

 

[LeahInancsi]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum, so mods, feel free to move it.

I’m a college student at another university, several hundred miles away from Virginia Tech, but similar in the fact that we’re in a small town with a ‘bubble’-like atmosphere that makes us feel safe.

Going to class this morning, I was surprised, first of all, by the reactions of my professors–both of whom took the time before class began to ask us how we felt and to reflect on the tragedy. Both were visibly shaken…one took a moment to pray for those who died yesterday “doing what we are about to do right now, learn, in a classroom.”

I know that a lot of people are criticizing the VT administration for not doing enough to stop the massacre, especially after the first shooting began…but imagining the situation at my university, I’m not even sure what they could do.

Email seems to be the *only *way that they can be sure of reaching us–but that is by no means immediate contact, and there can always be great delays in delivery. I’m pretty sure that the university doesn’t have all of our cell-phone numbers (and not everyone even has a cell), so they couldn’t contact us that way. There are no university-sponsored dorm phones, and many students live off campus. There is no PA system whatsoever that covers the whole campus, nor do I think that there are PA systems in any of the academic buildings.

I can imagine the university putting some/most of the buildings on lockdown, but as far as notifying the student body as to what is going on, I am at a loss. It’s like attempting to shut down a small city in a very short period of time–the only thing that I can think of is to have some sort of siren go off, but that might make the psychopath on a rampage even angrier and deadlier.

How do we, especially college students, protect ourselves from this insanity? Can we–at all?

[mod note: it is OK to leave thread here]

There is NOTHING WE can do because the school administrations don’t offer any psychiatric services for students who are in trouble. NOTHING!

When I was a junior at the University of Texas at Arlington suffering from severe depression over the break up of an engagement, I was directed to some zippy-dippy student playing councelor who tried to tell me how to get my homework done. HOMEWORK was not my problem. Staying alive was. I didn’t want to live. I could have committed suicide and no one who have said boo.

It’s much, much worse now because a psychiatrist will not talk to you unless they can make big bucks off of you in a hospital setting. If I had had to depend on psychiatric professionals to help me solve my problems, I would be dead now. It’s as simple as that.

I can’t stand to listen to CNN because it’s all ****. No one cared about this kid. They just wanted him to go away. Far away.

I’m having some spiritual problems right now, but I can’t find anyone in my parish who will take the time to sit down and listen to me, much less help me.

 

[seekerz]

Stay strong; the Lord who brought you this far will sustain you.
Being unable to find someone to listen and help with problems is all too common. Everybody seems to want a quick fix; increasingly these days from a bottle of antidepressants. Not that those aren’t sometimes necessary, but they can never replace the milk of human kindness. Know that you are not alone.

 

[mary_bobo]

Of course. And the gun will have to be locked away somewhere - will a panicking teacher have time to find the keys, unlock the drawer and get the gun out and aim it, before the madman gets into the classroom? Sometimes, perhaps, but not always. And what happens when a teacher loses the keys, because someone or other will, sooner or later.

In any event, if the person who wants to massacre people knows all this, he’ll just go and massacre people when they won’t have a weapon to hand. In the gym for example, like Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane.

Mike

You think an untrained teacher would be allowed to have a gun? And there is no reason why the teacher could not have a carry permit. It does not need to be worn western style. There are lots of ways to carry a gun that no one can tell. A massacre prone individual may get to a few people, but the armed teacher could dispatch him/her before more damage was done.

 

[mary_bobo]

Vern, first I want to note I’m sincerley not arguing for the sake of arguing.

Isn’t designing and implementing a self-defense training program - in this case for teachers - showing some options of how to react in violent situations. Especially where police are unavailable at that moment better than none at all? Giving on something to rely on as opposed to complete panic.

In your experience do you see any “realistic” way to offer any self-defense training that could save some lives in worst case scenario’s as say School shootings?

There are many certified training courses out there for the taking. I will be taking another (I have already had several) class on May 5 called “Refuse to be a Victim”. There is very little in this class about guns. A school could have such classes. Perhaps this tragedy will facilitate that. Such classes are designed to help people learn how to form a plan when an incident arises. Having a plan is the best way to defend yourself.

 

[jc-servant]

Non-letal weapons in a school enviornment are effective.

The universities that I have attended and worked at are part of the real world were non-lethal weapons are not always sufficent. The FBI use of force model allows officers to use one level of force higher than the subject in order to stop him/her. If someone is attacking with a knife, the police get to use a gun.

Spray and Tasers are basically good for someone who wants to fist fight and who has no actual weapon. They do not always incapacitate a person before they can rush an officer or innocent person and cause major harm.

Being in a school environment does not change the laws of physics or any other principles that govern the effectiveness of lethal and “non-lethal” weapons.

When I engaged with suspects carrying tire irons, knives or guns, I was ready with my gun. I learned in one street survival course that a fairly non-athletic suspect with a knife can run more than 50 feet and stab an officer in the couple of seconds it normally takes an officer to draw from their holster, aim their gun and get the first shot off. We recreated the exercise with numerous people from fat to skinny and they all got to the officer before they could shoot or just as the first shot was firing (not using real bullets of course).

 

[vern_humphrey]

The universities that I have attended and worked at are part of the real world were non-lethal weapons are not always sufficent. The FBI use of force model allows officers to use one level of force higher than the subject in order to stop him/her. If someone is attacking with a knife, the police get to use a gun.

Spray and Tasers are basically good for someone who wants to fist fight and who has no actual weapon. They do not always incapacitate a person before they can rush an officer or innocent person and cause major harm.

Being in a school environment does not change the laws of physics or any other principles that govern the effectiveness of lethal and “non-lethal” weapons.

When I engaged with suspects carrying tire irons, knives or guns, I was ready with my gun. I learned in one street survival course that a fairly non-athletic suspect with a knife can run more than 50 feet and stab an officer in the couple of seconds it normally takes an officer to draw from their holster, aim their gun and get the first shot off. We recreated the exercise with numerous people from fat to skinny and they all got to the officer before they could shoot or just as the first shot was firing (not using real bullets of course).

One of the most important training techniques is the Tueller Drill.

For those who don’t know, Sergeant Dennis Tueller of the Salt Lake City PD developed this drill. The class is divided into groups of there. Each group consists of an attacker, with a rubber knife, a defender with a toy gun (or sometimes an air gun or similar weapon) and a recorder with clipboard and stopwatch.

Attacker and defender stand 21 feet apart. At the attacker’s option, he charges the defender, who tries to shoot him. The recorder starts the watch when he sees the attacker start to move and stops it when the attacker stabs the defender. Then they rotate positions and do it again.

This quickly builds up a data base (and after more than a decade, the data base is huge.) The general results are:

1. The attack takes 1.5 seconds, give or take 0.1 seconds.
2. The age, weight, or sex of the attacker doesn’t affect the results.
3. In the vast majority of cases, the attacker succeeds in delivering a lethal wound.

The lesson is simple; when facing a knife-wielding opponent at that range, if you want to live, you have to shoot before he starts toward you.

 

[puzzleannie]

I totally agree with you about privacy laws. Really, is there some reason the university could not have compelled him to get professional help on threat of expulsion from the dorm (considering the fire, the suicide threat and complaints of stalking)? Human pyschology is one place where the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it rule” does not apply; we need to fix what appears to be about to break before it does.

yes, there is a reason the university could not compel him to get professional help. If an adult is not actually engaged in behavior that poses an immediate threat to himself or others the police and the courts are powerless to act. The parents, family, employer, school etc. also have no standing when it comes to an adult. The very most that can happen is that he can be held for observation for 72 hours, then he must be released unless evaluation shows there is some danger. It sounds from published reports as if he was held on this basis at least twice before. You cannot hold someone against their will for any longer unless the evaluation makes a diagnosis that finds he is a danger. Even in that case he must in most cases be treated for up to 6 weeks and then released unless he has shown no improvement. We have a schizophrenic family member who is now in his 30s, and every few months a family members has to fly to wherever he is, bail him out, pay for the damage he has done, take him out of rehab, fill his prescription, find him a place to live, until the next time he goes off his meds. “The System” is broke and does need to be fixed.