These Things Are Going to Happen

I think I tend to disagree with the general premise of the article here.  I think there could/should have been some sort of emergency system of evacuation from and blockade to entrance of the campus after the initial 2 killings.  Two people have just been shot in cold blood, apparently randomly, and the killer is unaccounted for.  It is not a stretch at all to figure that the guy might be roaming around campus looking for his next victims.  I’m thinking Columbine right off the bat!  Also, in this day and age it could be a terrorist related thing, with more to come in ensuing hours—isn’t that how those guys operate? 

  All available campus/local police and swat crews should have been there immediately, casing the campus and conducting evacuations/blockades.  There should’ve been some sort of organized system of evacuation process in place and predesignated loations on campus for students/faculty to flee to(after they—the locations—had been secured).  This deal about sending out e-mails is a total joke:  ‘uh, there might be a random killer/terrorist on campus, we’ll just textmsg. everyone on campus so they can watch their collective back….guess that guy/class didn’t get/check his msgs today…’  How absurd is that!!! 

It is TRAGIC what happened at VT, no doubt, I am not trying to place blame on the University for it’s response that was based on current resources and emergency preplanning(or lack thereof); I realize that it is a tall order to deal with the logistics on this scale, have systems in place, etc. for these types of crises.  But this is the brave new world in which we live—Columbine, 9/11, etc.—so institutions must, I think in these times, have effective systems in place for these types of emergencies.

  To think of the initial murders in terms of ‘domestic violence’ mainly, I think is ridiculous.  There had been 2 bomb threats to the campus within the previous month.  Yeah, domestic violence is what I’m thinking!

  They had a similar thing out here near Boston a few years back where a disgruntled worker had come into the office one morning and just started blowing everybody away with a shotgun.  About 20 dead!  I think adjacent office buildings were left similarly uninformed about what was taking place.  The thing was in court for months and months trying to determine the guy’s sentence—he was ‘Psycho’ to say the least and tried to cop an insanity plea!  Got multiple life sentences.

It is an unspeakable travesty what has happened to the families of the victims and if I had had a son or daughter get killed like this at college, well, I’m permanently scarred/heartbroken AND looking for answers.

I agree with the commentary regarding increased public surveillence being a bad thing.  Don’t know what to say about that right now, but definitely think institutions, communities, private citizens have to have better emergency systems in place for (?)—-RANDOM VIOLENCE(?)....

(They should also ban the sale of all automatic/semi automatic guns in this country, IMO).  I have no problem with people owning guns for hunting or basic defense.

I guess what bothers me the most is all of the blame being directed at the University.  My thinking is that if the campus was on lockdown, the gunman would have went out and found 30 other people to kill.  A Division I campus is no small task to try and shut down.  I agree with Steve.  A double homicide leading to a killing spree?  Unlikely and unfortunate.  If we thought killing spree each time there was a murder in this country where would we be???

Steve,

I couldn’t agree more:  highways are far more dangerous than colleges and more should be done to make them safer, what?—not a clue!  People drive way too fast and get way too drunk(etc) and then combine the two.

  The military is arguably much more dangerous than the average college too, but you’re actually encouraged to go there for the sake of ‘honor’, ‘courage’, ‘defending your country’(when usually you’re just defending the imperialist’s ‘legal/god given right’ to conduct imperialistic genocide. Of course, that might be too rad a thought for this website).

But regarding VT, I am not throwing blame at them, too much, they did/are doing their best considering their resources and the fact that this is such a low %, very random event.  I also am not saying that schools and other institutions should become like something out of the mind of George Orwell.  Not at all, but there could be significant improvement in organized response to this sort of thing—I’m sure you would agree.  All commercial/public buildings are required to have fire alarm systems in place, it hasn’t always been that way, and this is a fairly simple concept(I’m in construction—union carpenter).  Of course, there’s not usually a terribly organized evacuation protocol for fires in buildings, but if you personally were in a burning building w/o an alarm system, well, need I say more?  There could be a relatively simple, ‘bottom line’ alarm system throughout a campus, both inside the buildings and outdoors that could indicate such an extremely rare/freak event.  Tornado type siren ain’t such a bad idea either, in combo.

Plus I think there has to be, in these times, a more beefed up response to this sort of thing.  Look what happens at an airport these days if you have some Vaseline or something, in your pocket; they pretty much shut the whole place down.  Now that’s certainly a stupid sort of extreme.

  I was thinking more about this today and I live in a small town in western MA and if there was some sort of killer on the lose, I would want some sort of overt signal going on to at least give me a chance to head for the hills.  None of this txt msg b.s., at least in and of itself.

  More could be said, but too tired now.  Thanks for the exchange!

Steve,

Regarding the highway thing:  I’ve long been an advocate of state of the art, mass transit on a massive scale for the U.S., you know, like every other modern country has?  Maybe that could help cut down on highway deaths. But it won’t happen anytime soon because the petroleum moguls don’t want that, and they control the shots—that’s why Dub-ya’s our prez…

One year ago the State of Virginia debated and voted on allowing those citizens with concealed weapon permits to carry them on campus.  It was voted down.  This left only the nut case with a gun and no one else able to defend themselves.  When are we going to wake up.  More guns in the right hands can prevent stuff like this.

There are those of us that have concealed carry permits that visit the range often and can hit what we aim at.  I would wager that I frequent the range more often than our Sioux Falls SD police.  By the way, there are more than 30,000 concealed carry permits in South Dakota.  Wonder why our crime rate is so low?

What I want to know is why are they selling semi automatic guns in gunshops?  What’s the ‘rationale’ behind that.  I think both of those pistols that idiot had could fire up to 30 multiple rounds or so!  Can you get machine guns in these shops too?  I mean how is this justified?  I don’t own a gun, but have considered getting one for self defense in my home:  hows ‘bout an M-16?  That’d probably do the trick!

Hey Dale,

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most college kids haven’t spent the time at the range like you have…which is why I agree with Steve.  Most college kids do not need a handgun and I’m sure most would not carry it to class, at least not until now.

I also go back to one of your sentences earlier, “More guns in the right hands can prevent stuff like this”.  More guns in the WRONG hands can cause more stuff like this!!

Interesting comments guys.  The rational is that teachers and instructors have access, those that want too at least.

I think it’s interesting that in a gun restricted area there is the nut with a gun.  No amount of laws can prevent that.

In keeping with what can be bought at gun shops, no you cannot buy a machine gun.  That has been illegal since the 1930’s.  The semi auto hand guns were limited for a while to 10 rounds but I think that has been lifted.  The semi autos I own will only hold 8.

About Florida.  I don’t remember the exact stats but I do remember that crime rates DROPPED dramatically when concealed carry was established.  The bad guys then started targeting rental cars as they knew those folks would not be armed.  I believe the last number I heard is that 41 states now have concelled carry permits and many have reciprocity with others.

I just heard that an up coming 20/20 program was going to focus on stories of actual cases of people defending themselves and others with guns.  Should be very interesting.  The NRA claims there are more than two million cases a year, many where not a shot is fired, just producing the weapon stopped the bad guy.

Well, enough rant.  Those that want all the guns picked up will not change their mind and we “gun nuts” won’t either.

Have fun.

Dale

Concealed guns on campus would be a bad idea. Like Steve said, “Guns and alcohol don’t mix.” I go to a smaller University in Nebraska and I’d feel very unsafe knowing my hungover/drunk classmates are toting guns. I know there are a lot of responsible gun owners and that some people can use them effectively. But I don’t think that too many college kids are responsible enough to handle a firearm in a public place. Not to mention that if a fight broke out and it ended with a drunk student pulling a gun on another drunk student it probably wouldn’t end well for anyone. I also think that school shootings are pretty far apart and they don’t happen very often. 32 people lost there lives at Va Tech, but how many would die due to accidental gun deaths. Than if everyone is carrying guns and a shooting does happen how are the police supposed to know who’s the shooter and who’s not when everyones holding a gun. Also this puts more of the nations police officers at risk every day when they have to worry about any average Joe carrying a gun. I think that there are people that are responsible enough to carry guns, but it be far better for colleges to have a no gun policy. And like Steve said I hope this doesn’t ruin the excellent sport of college football. Although I think no safety procedure known to man will stop Husker fans from filling Memorial Stadium on Saturdays in the fall.

Thanks for all the good work guys.

First of all, you have to be 21 to obtain a concealed carry permit. This talk of arming all the students is just hysteria. That leaves the faculty and students over 21 as eligible. The majority of them won’t do it. That’s fine. The few that do and would carry would be enough to stop such an incident. Leaving students in our schools defenseless is just foolish. Concealed carry does lower the crime rate. Established fact.

The assault weapon ban only bans guns that look fierce. There are more powerful and faster weapons available that aren’t banned. The assault weapon ban is strictly image.

Check out the “Armed Citizen” column in NRA magazine. The bad guys lose everyday. The liberal media won’t report it.

The 1992 Actuarial Science building near-miss was the first thing that I thought of when I heard this news.  Good call…this is the first place where I’ve seen that mentioned (thanks for the link.)  I was a student at UNL when that occurred and one of my best friends in college was an A.S. major (but not in the class and I don’t think that he was even in the building when it happened.)  That was pretty freaky at the time…

But I liked the general tone of Steve’s analysis.  I think that this is actually a more apt use of that old chestnut “freedom isn’t free”.  Allowing our freedoms (those which are provided in Amendment #2 to the Constitution) to flourish in the face of this tragedy would be a true example of “fighting for our freedoms”.  But my guess is that they’ll probably be chipped away at in a similar manner that our 4th Amendment rights were, post-9/11. 

And I’m not one to be confused with a “gun nut” of any sort.  The only weapon that I choose to own is a Daisy air rifle with hollow point bb’s (that’ll tear a hole right through a pigeon…)  But I simply don’t wish to infringe upon any other upstanding citizen’s right to make their own decision as to whether or not to own firearms (as mandated by the Constitution) just as I’ve made my own.  To me, that’s the true spirit of freedom…being free to do as you choose and being comfortable in allowing others the freedom to do the same.  So if being on the side of not wanting the Constitution shredded up any more than it already has been puts me in the the gun nut camp this time, then that’s fine with me.  Perhaps one of them will protect me in the event that I should someday be in a situation where I might need it.  I’ll bet that there are several thousand grieving people in Blacksburg, Virginia this week who are wishing that someone would’ve been there to protect their loved ones.  It certainly well appears that the government wasn’t capable of doing so.  In fact, in the way that the state bureaucracies failed to connect on the shooter’s background check, one could easily make the case that the government actually failed quite miserably in the only reasonable opportunity to prevent the massacre from happening.  (It sounded like the gun was bought and sold on the up-and-up…nothing from the school’s end could’ve reasonably indicated that this student was extremely more out of the ordinary than any of the many other students who suffer from emotional problems…he had no history of violence in his past…and as it’s been said, how in the world are local cops to be expected to lock down an entire community whenever an apparant domestic homicide takes place?)  But not having his background check cross-reference with the list of psych-ward commitments is a pretty big lapse which, in my eyes, defines the state government’s culpability.  The gun legislation and restrictions that do exist are supposedly put into place with the intention of preventing this very thing…so why didn’t the government do it’s job of prevention?  All it would’ve taken was connecting a couple of databases for search access by whatever office is in charge of approving gun licenses!  But even in spite of the fact that they didn’t accomplish this, just one good marksmen in any classroom undoubtedly could’ve potentially lessened the carnage considerably, if not prevented it altogether.

Although all that being said, I do also see the merit of not wanting a bunch of guns in the hands of college kids, many of whom are wasted about half of the time.  So who knows what the solution would’ve/could’ve/should’ve been.

But from reading the spirited discourse, I am at least relieved to see that the first amendment is apparently alive and well…great discussion by Steve and all of the posters.  The Dennis Miller quote was great and this:

“We talk about fighting and dying for freedom and yet we’d rather go through checkpoints like it’s 1984 in East Berlin.”

...was right on the dot.

And Dan, if you actually believe that the eight corporate media conglomerates that own every major outlet of the communications industry are in any way “liberal”...well, if you genuinely believe that, that’s a good one too, because it means that you go by a pretty rare definition of the word!  I used to work for the corporate-owned national media, so I can tell you from experience that they’re money-making machines that are whores to the establishment, who sell whatever the least common denominator (who’ve been under the spell of the magic glowing tube for the last 50 years) will lap up and buy…Established fact. 

I wish we as a society could shake ourselves out of this collective mentality, where there’s this “our team” against “their team” mindset that’s so critical to maintaining the two-party American political system…Where everything that’s wrong with the world (from your perspective) is the fault of the political party with whom you’re not affiliated and the way you think on every single issue can be compartmentalized into one of two colors.  But the divide and conquer technique has served the status quo for lo, the last couple hundred years or so…and I’m probably just wasting my breath, but here’s a hint people: they’re all on the same team!!  Haven’t you ever watched professional wrestling?  Whenever Rowdy Roddy Piper went good everything went to hell, because with two good guys the whole system was out of whack.  In politics (as in wrestling) the “good guys” and “bad guys” each require the other’s defeats to define their own successes.  Both present themselves as tirelessly committed to the eventual elimination of the other, but neither are fool enough to cop to the fact that if they ever did claim victory on every cause, the bottomless pit of money (that they receive from the supporters of those causes) would cease to exist.

But since Dan appears to get a certain amount of his information from the internet (he’s here, after all) what does he care if the mainstream media is “liberal”, “conservative” or otherwise?  The internet has rendered the MSM (and whatever political bent that any given viewer perceives it to have) irrelevant to the relative minority who use it as their primary source of information and communication. 

And the minority status of that group is why I figure that we’ll probably, once again, “surrender our common sense to low-probability events” (as Steve aptly put it) and the media minions will deliver the message (wrapped in a flag) to the simpleton masses, as to exactly why we should willingly renounce more of our guaranteed rights as citizens, all in the name of safety (to the very government who doesn’t exactly have a bang-up track record of providing such, as of late.)  And they’ll lap it up, as they always do, like the mindless peasantry of consumers that they are.

Wow, DT! That’s quite a mouthful.

The only fact that you take issue with is my calling the media liberal. I’ll side with Bernie Goldberg, formerly of CBS news, who’s book “Bias” clearly defines the manner that the majority of our media is indeed liberal.

I’ve heard you type of argument as running out of bullets and throwing the gun. No challenge on a factual basis at all.

Jason—reading it again, my comments might be a better candidate for “manifesto of the week”!  I must admit that I can’t help myself but to go off on tangents from time to time, I guess…all in the name of good discussion, though. 

But I think it’s great that you guys offered commentary on this topic, all the while relating it back to a little-known fact of UNL history.  I just wanted to give back what I could, since I don’t take the time to comment on all of the fine work here at BRN near as often as I’d like.  Most of the time, that’s because I don’t have much else to say that hasn’t already been said…so “I concur” doesn’t really add much to the discourse, in my mind.  But I just can’t get over how often I silently applaud the views that you guys represent on most any topic…always so well-reasoned and sensible.  The civil discourse that you mention is a byproduct of the tone that you all set.  Keep up the good work!

Bomb threat at UNL today—false alarm.  Oth(er)man(?) Hall, engineering bldg.(as per Daily Nebraskan).

Had a similar thing literally within 1/2 mile from my place here in western MA(Berkshires) yesterday.  Cops and Fire dpt. all over the place….

Is this the way it’s gonna be for awhile now?

Totally agreed Darren…what sells?  Well, what exactly would you like to buy?  You can get it in either flavor now…and like you mention, it’s all now available in “EXTRA LOUD!!!” 

Dan, not having read Goldberg’s book, I really can’t comment on it.  But I did notice that it was published by Regnery Publishing (known for the Swift boat book against Kerry as well as publishing authors such as Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin & Newt Gingrich) so I’ve got a pretty good hunch as to what their angle is…raking in money by selling conservatives exactly what they want to hear.  (It sounds like they got a little of yours by doing just that.)

I’d advise you to check out Accuracy in media (aim.org “red guys”) and Media Matter for America (mediamatters.org “blue guys”)...both “media watchdog” groups froth at the mouth for the better part of every day, poring over every “biased” word that emits from the squak box.  Like Darren said, the extremes of both sides are more than adequately represented in this day and age and both totally ignore the perspective of those 80% of us in the middle.  If you don’t recognize that, you’re just not paying attention.  My main point there was that, in my experience, the corporations that own the media are not liberal in the slightest, by any definition.  The gun that proves that theory never runs out of bullets.  Sorry, if that doesn’t fit into your agenda, we’re gonna just have to agree to disagree. 

But don’t take my word for it…according to Dale’s comments, it’s funny how it appears that the bastion of liberal values known as the Walt Disney Company is planning on airing a piece on 20/20 that echos the story which you claimed was only being reported on in the NRA magazine. 

WHAT, NOOOO SHOOOUUUTING!  WHAT DOOO YOOOUUU MEEEAN NOOO SHOOOUTING?

Well, maybe this website isn’t going to be as fun as I originally thought.  I work as a union carpenter on large construction sites:  guys/gals, I HAVE to be able to SHOOOUT ev’ry now and agin’!

ANY-HOOOOO!!!

  Well, I guess this is somewhat aside from the specific topic of the VT massacre, but since some of you are discussing U.S. politics/society at large, I thought I would add my ‘fiddy cent’ worth.

  So, I agree with ‘Tolstoy’...uh, I mean DT up there in that all mass media is money driven:  it’s funded by the various corporate/consumer entities that basically want as many a$$es in couches watching whatever shows/news etc. so they can be brainwashed by the advertising propoganda in between; I file it under the category of Noam Chomsky’s ‘manufacturing of consent’ terminology.

  So today, the U.S. has evolved both ‘liberal’(say CNN) AND ‘conservative’(say, Fox) media that are probably about equal strength at this point since the country is pretty much divided equally into ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ populations(note last 2 prez elections).  So, it’s just simple marketing 101.  If there were massive numbers of people who thought of themselves as neo-fascists, for e.g., we would see a ‘NEO FASCIST MEDIA’, w/o a doubt.  As my fake name ‘‘sa blang thang’(see explanation from 4/5 ‘Best of Bowman’ #5 post) infers:  ‘It is a bling thing; U.S. culture, that is—CONSUMERISM RULES(is THE ‘religion’).

‘...the mindless peasantry of consumers that they are…’(DT). 

  ‘Mindless’ MAY be a bit harsh; I think ‘brainwashed’, ‘bombarded’ with consumerist propaganda MAY be more ‘in da pocket’.

MANUFACTURING OF CONSENT!  (it’s what it’s all about)

O.k. THAAANKS FOOOR LISTEEEENING!!!(shouting again)

REd SoX vs. Yank-mees tonight, gots ta go.

  GO SOX!  (and Big Red!)

Again, DT, you attack a publisher of a book not the fact behind the liberal media. Bernie Goldberg was a lifelong self professed liberal until he wrote his book and was fired by CBS. The liberal media censors those who disagree.

I’ll throw in a bit about Fox News also. Did you know that the vast majority of it’s news people came from the big three, NBC, CBS and NBC? Were they opinionated before or after they left? Did they suddenly have a revelation? Most of them will tell you that they were tired of having the liberal viewpoint enforced. They now report both sides of the issues.