32 dead in Va - why do you care?

The BBQ Pit
161

pool, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve been reading about Ryan before I saw your post, and he seemed like a nice guy.

I care because I grew up in Virginia and still consider it home. I’ve been to Virginia Tech many times, and have always loved the campus - it was my second-choice school. The shooter came from my niece and nephew’s high school, and because he went to school with my nephew - he could have done this a few years earlier. My nephew knew two of the victims from this shooting - he goes to UVA, and those two victims also went to his high school, friends of his. I’m sad for my nephew. I’m sad for his friends’ parents, who are going to be burying their children.

I lived in NYC during 9/11, and I can imagine what kind of shock these students are in right now. I heard one VT student on the radio yesterday talking about how a lot of students were going home, but she didn’t want to leave - she wanted to be with her friends because that’s where she felt she needed to be. It’s a common reaction - after 9/11, I had to leave town for a wedding, and all I wanted was to be in the city with my friends and the other New Yorkers who’d gone through that day - regardless of the horrible situation that had just happened, it took everything I had to get on the train and leave. I can’t help but empathize with them.

E.

162

Hmmm…I thought I made it clear that I was assuming all other things being equal, and that I don’t personally know any of the people involved. I already said it’s quite a different story if it’s someone I know.

Who said anyone didn’t feel bad about Iraqi civilians?

Who said there was something wrong with mourning dead people?

I pointed out that, all other things being equal, just because a tragedy happened in my country doesn’t make it more emotionally significant. You seem to be saying that this is a universal feeling - that nobody feels a stronger emotional attachment to something just because it happened in their country? Is this true? - because I was getting the opposite impression.

What does everyone think? All other things being equal, and the victims being strangers to you, do you have exactly the same emotional reaction to tragedies in your country vs. far-away countries?

163

Well, what I think is what I posted in #121 and 154. Hope that helps.

164

Would it be wrong for me to say that if Nikki Giovanni had been one of his victims, I would have bonus hate for Cho? I just happen to love her poetry, that’s all.

165

Because I have kids, one that is 27, a bit above the age of the kids involved at Vtech, and one that is 15 and a half, slightly under the age of the kids involved in the shooting. It’s quite easy to put myself in the place of those parents, or even grieving brothers, sisters and friends.

And since this could have happened in any of our own backyards, I’m pretty irritated at the way the mainstream media has been practically throwing themselves off of cliffs to get at the “real issue” here that of this supposedly “proving” that more gun control is needed (you mean in addition to the 90,817 laws already on the books?).

I’ve not seen one single news article, nor one single solitary report in which stronger support for the mentally ill is called for. This kid (the killer) was absolutely SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER at the top of his lungs for someone to help him. According to the reports people knew of his problems months before the incident.

From what I could see in dozens of mainstream news reports about the incident, no one did more than “refer him to counseling”. If the media was really concerned with helping, they would give this as much airplay as the supposed evil gun problem. And I’m equally as irritated at the rightie talk show circuit for seizing upon this, calling him “evil incarnate” and using it as an excuse to pound the left.

ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!

Now look, I couldn’t care less about guns one way or another. I support the second amendment (that’s the gun one right?), but have no interest in either owning or using one myself, nor in preventing others from legally owning or using them. It wouldn’t matter one whit to me if they toughened the laws even further.

What sticks in my craw is that both sides are so salivating, so foaming at the mouth to use this as an opportunity to get AT each other that a very real issue is being pretty much ignored by both sides.

Again, this could have happened in any one of our backyards, and lax gun laws or lack of allowing guns on campus are NOT at fault here. Someone falling down on the job, first by failing to get this kid help, or get him off campus until he could GET help, and then second by failing to warn these students after the first murder victims were located is very MUCH part of the fault here. And that makes me care a lot, it could be any one of us, at any time.

166

What would you have done?

167

Agree with this completely.

Not as sure about this. The problem with the people who need counselling and medication the most is that they seem to be the least likely to actually go to counselling and take their meds. Maybe locking this guy up for the rest of his life if he could never find his way back from “homicidally crazy” was the solution.

There are definitely bigger, more relevant issues here than more or fewer guns.

168

Just to share a story:
One of our campus health center’s nurses told us faculty members of an incident last year–no names–involving a student who turned in an essay which was a detailed process analysis of how he would rape and kill his professor (the same one he had handed the essay to).
It could have been that he was just a complete jerk who thought this was funny and had no intention of doing it. But they didn’t take the chance. If I recall correctly, a flurry of emails and phone calls ensued to administration, security, local police and the college health center. I’m unsure of the outcome, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular student had been suspended or ended up with a restraining order against him, at the very least.

169

That’s nice 20/20 hindsight there, but what would have been the justification for locking this kid up? Because he wrote some disturbing stories? If we did that, we’d definitely have to lock up folks like Quentin Tarantino.

170

Or everyone writing hacksaw chainsaw jigsaw hostel screenplays, for that matter.

171

I have a lot of experience attempting to get people who need help into mental health facilities (it was my job for about two years). When it’s a voluntary commitment, it isn’t easy: bed space is very limited, the time they’re allowed to remain there is very regimented, there’s a huge problem of pencil pushers playing with statistics (“If we take this person he’ll probably leave AMA and that will look bad, but this garden variety depressive will take the treatment and look good on statistics… we’ll take him”), and in Alabama (as with other states) the power to commit is held by probate judges who, if you’re lucky, have education beyond a GED and don’t feel they can look at someone and tell then and there if he or she is sane (rather like the British crown can cure scrofula) and therefore don’t need any advice from somebody who sees this person everyday. As said, this is a voluntary commission; involuntary is several times harder, especially if the person can fake sanity long enough for a court appearance (which many can: I once had a client who had not slept in 48 hours and was hearing voices and waiting to communicate with Elvis through his toaster oven [all true] who pulled it together for the few minutes necessary to seem rational in front of a probate judge). All of this was in Alabama, which believe it or not is considered one of the best mental healthcare systems in the nation.

In Virginia it’s evidently even more difficult to involuntarily commit. According to the news today Cho was psychiatrically evaluated in late 2005 by psychiatrists who ruled him a danger to himself and to others and strongly recommended hospitalization, but the judge (for whatever reasons of whatever validity- and there could have been valid reasons such as lack of bedspace) ordered outpatient treatment only.

172

If that was on-line, could you post a link?

173

I saw the same piece Sampiro did. They talked about “who’s gonna pay?” blah, blah, blah as a standard conversation when committing someone to a live-in mental health facility. It definitely had the vibe of dollars-over-healthcare-over-public-safety.

174

Wish I had seen that. It’s tricky when you start talking about involuntarily committing people. People have rights.

175

Here’s one, though in this it says the judge did not rule him dangerous to others, only suicidal:

176

Coulter joins the Arm Those Students camps. (Since Columbine and most other school shootings in the past two decades have involved high schools, I wonder if it would behoove us to pass out pistols to 10th graders.)

177

My aunt died one week ago today. I saw how it affected my Mother and our entire family.

My Wife and I and cousins saw it first hand.

It was a nice service.

32 young lives where lost at V-tech. And I see that a number of bombs killed 138 in Iraq.

Does it mater to me Dinsdale? I guess not one bit, though I do know that those sons, daughters, and wives and husbands are hurting.

I’m just a nephew. A mothers son. A husband.

178

Sorry this tastes like duck rectum, but I agree with OP. I’m even more pissed at NBC than I was a week or so ago (thanks, Matt).
Anyway death is a way of life. I wish it wouldn’t of happened, I don’t want it to happen to me or my loved ones but in a hundred years will any of this going to really matter to anyone - including those who lost their lives?

179

Notice the “maybe” in my post. I don’t know what the solution is any better than anyone else does.

People who want students armed, Ann Freakin’ Coulter is agreeing with you - doesn’t that tell you anything?

180

Nah - people like that are impervious to reason.