evading VA tech massacre? - Page 2

Originally posted by: usachick821

hi everyone, i usually post here often, but i havent been able to do so in a while. It saddens me that this debate is what brings me here because one of my dearest friend's cousin whom i knew very well was shot and killed in this massacre. He will remain nameless but had went to Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, VA, where i live and go to high school. A lot of people my school who i have known for years from Stuart Hall (my high school) were there, but thank god they're okay.

I dont want to start this debate to blame someone for this, but what could they have done better to prevent this from happening in the first place, i mean without restricting people's freedom?

😭😭my condolences.😭😭

Yesterday they were telling on the news that when the parents and the loved ones of those who were a part of V.Tech..came to know about the shooting they started calling their relatives to see if they were OK......and when the emergency personnel were carrying out the bodies of those killed the cellphones of those victims were ringing....must be the parents or the loved ones to find if they were OK and not knowing that their child was being carried out dead....😭......i can't even imagine the grief of those parents....😭😭...may God give them strenght 😭😭

Originally posted by: Sound

This is an excerpt fromt he article DB posted in the "Mujhe Kuch kehna hai" thread:

Man alarmed instructors, classmates
A Virginia Tech professor told NBC News that Cho's creative writing was so disturbing that she referred him to the school's counseling service, but he would not go. The professor, Lucinda Roy, the English Department's director of creative writing, would not comment at length on Cho's writings, saying only that in general they "seemed very angry."

"I kept saying, 'Please go to counseling; I will take you to counseling,' because he was so depressed," Roy said. But "I was told [by counselors] that you can't force anybody to go over ... so their hands were tied, too."

Fellow students in a playwriting class with Cho also noticed the dark and disturbing nature of his compositions.

"His writing, the plays, were really morbid and grotesque," Stephanie Derry, a senior English major, told the campus newspaper, The Collegiate Times.

"I remember one of them very well. It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play, the boy threw a chainsaw around and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father with a Rice Krispy treat," Derry said.

QT, counselling was there but the guy didn't want to avail it

Its common to paint somebody black once he is dead.. Even smallest act has a dark side perhaps.. What I fear is this is diverting the issue at hand... The question is was he really mentally unstable or was it a momentary rage he was experienced commonly seen even amongst teenagers...

By painting this guy black the main issue might be covered up... and there will be another shooting few months or years later...

I am a bit surprised that no-one really tried to overpower or resist him...

Originally posted by: SolidSnake

I am a bit surprised that no-one really tried to overpower or resist him...

Maybe they did and got killed.....😭....and anyways how is someone supposed to overpower a madman with a gun and killing people left and right......he killed 32...and injured a lot others...remember..😭

Are people in US taught how to react in such kind of situation? Are there any mock drill sort of things conducted?

My condolence to all victims, there families and friends.

Originally posted by: ani11

Maybe they did and got killed.....😭....and anyways how is someone supposed to overpower a madman with a gun and killing people left and right......he killed 32...and injured a lot others...remember..😭

exactly Ani. More importantly some from the gun supporting lobby is using this as a supportive argument to say that if one of the kids in the class had a gun so many wouldnt have been killed...and that the shooter be dead before causing so much damage...

This country has a plenty of idiots I would think....

Originally posted by: SolidSnake

Are people in US taught how to react in such kind of situation? Are there any mock drill sort of things conducted?

My condolence to all victims, there families and friends.

Man nobody can do anything in these situations anywhere in the world... India koi knife dikhata hai to hum kuch nahi karte what do you expect any students to do in this circumstances.. try out their Karate!!!! Nothing can be done besides trying to get out of the fire.. thast what that guy who jumped from window did....

Originally posted by: SolidSnake

Are people in US taught how to react in such kind of situation? Are there any mock drill sort of things conducted?

My condolence to all victims, there families and friends.

yess the students do have drills...but as qwerty said that when such a situation comes glaring at ur face ...none of those drills work...

First and foremost... which section would be appropriate to open a thread where we could pay our condolences to the friends and families of the victims? I recently got a link to one of the victim's profiles at a different site.... reading a name and seeing a face suddenly made this whole even really real. Ever since I've been trying to control my tears. I didn't even know the girl and I'm so upset over her death.. I can hardly imagine how her family and friends must be dealing with this.

As for addressing the shooter... there's a lot of speculation over his writing and life-style. But frankly, the writing hardly speaks to his issues. While writing is a reflection of a person's thoughts and experiences, it is so only to an extent. Were you to take a look at some of my works you'd and judge me based on that, you'd think I was a nymphomaniac completely intrigued by death and torture. Not true at all...it's just what the assignment and piece called for. Trying to judge the shooter based on his writing, movie and music preferences is very skewed and innaccurate.
From what I've read and heard, he was born in S. Korea and raised in teh US since the age of 9. People type-casted him as a loner, and perhaps that's true. He was also, as per roommates' accounts, depressed and efforts were made to have him see counselors. Counseling can not be forced upon an individual unless he/she is charged with a crime and sentenced to counseling or unless the courts appoint such an action because he/she is considered a harm to themself or others. In this case, that point came too late and the shooter is no longer alive to receive counseling.

The general public is in no position to analyze him as we are only receiving bits and pieces of information about his life...that too skewed and biased information.

Yet I'm sure most of us our still curious for the answer to "Why?" and "What was going through his head?" Most likely, we'll never know.

In the meantime, and once again... my condolences to all who were affected by this tragedy. I pray the victims' souls may rest in peace. 😭

As for drills... no. I think the last time I had anything remotely close to any training for such a situation was back in 4th where we used to have earthquake and tornado drills.

Being that US is a relatively safe nation, people just don't expect such incidents. Hence the lack of training to respond to such a situation, at a mass level that is.

And really, what's a day or two of lectures and drills on how to respond to such a thread going to mean to us? A majority of the population believes such a thing won't ever happen to them, so they dont' take the training seriously. And a day of explaining the situations and running through the hypotheticals doesn't really kick in at the real situation, typically. It's not like the military or law enforcement where you are trained day in and day out.

For the most part instinct takes over. For some that instinct was to pretend to have been shot already...and that may have saved their lives. For others, like the professor who had been a holocaust surviver, it was to try to ensure that the students could get away to safety. He was shot dead through the door he had been barricading. May he rest in peace.

Fight and flight... some chose to fight, some to take flight. Those who faught most likely lost thier lives to two guns...

And to all those who've said that the school should have been cancelled and the hostel/dorms put into lock down after the first incident ... please keep in mind that the perpetrator was still unknon after the first two deaths. After he shot the first two victims, he returned to his dorm. Had the dorms been put into lockdown at that point, he would have still had access to all his ammo as well as a large, contained population of students. Can you imagine how many more might have died in that situation?

What could have and should have and would have happened are all left in hypotheticals and wdishes now... what has happened, has happened. We can't turn back time, we can't bring the victims back and we can't bring the shooter back ... we can only pay our respect to the families and hope that in death the victims find peace.