Chris Rock said it best:

"Don't go to parties with metal detecters. Sure, it feels safe inside, but what about all those niggas waiting outside with guns? They know you ain't got one!"

The first part of the second amendment, the one about the militia, is why I think every American should be encouraged (not required, that also infringes on your right to not have a gun) to own guns.

[EDIT]: I've changed my mind, gun control is necessary. Why did I change my mind? Because I recently came to an Earth-shaking realization: There was no violence in the world before there were guns and Republicans and Charlton Heston, and no such thing as war before George W. Bush. Sorry guys, I wish I'd known this before!

The founding fathers were thinking that the people would always own firearms so that, if necessary, they could overthrow the government by force. Essentially a way to keep the politicos honest.

It's not that easy now, to overthrow the government by force we'd probably need more than some handguns and assault rifles, but I bet we could still do it if we tried and had the stomach for massive casualties.

The principle is still good. The constitution essentially assumes that most citizens are good, and gives them the freedoms and liberties to reward them. When evil people take advantage of the freedoms of our country, should our reaction be to remove more freedoms? Essentially let one asshole ruin it for everyone?

Or do we place the blame where it belongs, with the individual? (And not with any particular failure of laws or officials who cannot anticipate everything...)

That's why I advocate civilian suitcase nukes, and other various doomsday devices.

Leber, I think you hit the nail on the head. As for massive casualties, there is also the possibility of the national guard and/or military having trouble getting the troops to follow orders to mow down civilians after a while. It might be possible with as little as 200,000 losses, a bit less than what the confederacy lost trying to secure it's independence from DC.

Also a possible suggestion, Make classroom desktops resistant to 9 mm handgun rounds. It's not that hard really, on 99% of the desks have tops that are simply screwed in, all you'd need to do is stamp out a piece of 3/16th sheet metal and punch the holes in it and use longer screws. Then unarmed students at least have something to hide behind other than fellow classmates.

Indeed, look... and making classroom doors bullet-proof wouldn't be a bad call, either. One of the profs died saving his class because the shooter was able to fire through the wood.

Cunjo Wrote:
No concealed weapons permit for the shooter. Some of the other students had them, but were barred from bringing weapons on the campus anyway (incredibly stupid idea). Banning guns only restricts honest people, not killers. They created a defenseless victim zone at VTech, and then they paid for it. The sad part, is this is already being used by morons to push an anti-gun agenda with the intent of creating MORE defenseless victim zones and opportunities for violent crime and killings.

What if the other students did have guns? A shoot-out would have probably gotten more people killed than already happened. Life isn't a movie, and there are very few, if any "heroes" when it comes to combat. Evolutionary Ethics (as well as Nietzschian Ethics) state we're naturally inclined to look out for only ourselves, and SFA anyone around us. I'm 99.9% sure most people wouldn't stick around, be a hero and fight back; they'd be getting the hell out of there.

Then again, I'm not a gun control activist either. While I think (this is completely me) that your 2nd Amendment is a 200 years out of date, and completely unneccesary, having gun control laws "only restricts honest people, not killers." For instance Kimveer Gill who shot up Dawson College in Montreal. All of his weapons were registered, legal firearms under the Canadian government, and it didn't stop him from killing one and wounding twenty. Though I don't think giving everyone a gun will make the world a safer place, only allow more incidents like this to happen, or at the very least, "crimes of passion" (ie. unmeditated, spur of the moment murder) more frequent.

There's a lot of evidence that areas that allow open firearm wearing and concealed carry have almost no crime. Of course, these are almost ALWAYS rural areas that had almost no crime at all to begin with.

It's urban areas with dense population, more poverty, more stress and more problems that probably wouldn't benefit from concealed carry and/or lifting firearm restrictions. Imagine rush hour in LA when every driver is armed with a 9mm. Scary.

Now, to your point more specifically, A: If just ONE person in that dorm or in that hall had a firearm of any kind, this could have been stopped. A student, a security guard, an off-duty cop, anyone. Even if they had just squeezed off a few rounds in that sick fuck's general direction, missing him, he probably would have been scared off. If they were a halfway decent shot, they could have ended the murder spree right then and there by putting a single round on-target.

LeberMac, you raise an important point, namely a technical one: The question of whether a firearm (concealed or not) could actually brought to bear in an urban set-up. And if it could be brought to bear, what the consequences would be.

Firstly, if someone 'catches you with your trousers down', pointing a gun at you, going for your own piece would be incredibly stupid. You have no chance to be faster than the other's trigger finger, unless you're the reigning CAS champion (to which level, I would bet a substantial sum, around 80% of the gun-owners are not even remotely close).

Secondly, if you actually do get your weapon out in time, and trained on the perpetrator, chances are that you'll still miss. Since you cannot choose the location, chances are the area around and behind the target isn't conveniently covered in sandbags, or soflty sloping hills, but consists of harsh concrete and steel lamp-posts. These things cause ricochet, and bullets that ricochet, while retaining only a fraction of the original kinetic energy, can still cause deadly or crippling wounds.

That said, A-Dawg has a point about the majority of people not being heroes, and I'd wager a bet that at least a good percentage of the people who do sport guns are not doing so in order to act accordingly in a situation as described, but to conceal their own insecurity.

As for bullet-proof door/desk material, good call, since it's easy to implement, but it'll still cost money. Maybe the MIC could be induced to shave off a smidget of their earnings to account for this? After all, they are making a killing off weapons...

Tosh: even if one or more individuals had returned fire, it is unlikely that the resulting injuries or fatalities from their possibly missing Cho would come anywhere close to the number of casualties that result from someone intending to shoot and kill would cause (in this case, 32).

Also, keep in mind that there are plenty of people willing to respond in a courageous manner. Tech: one professor killed while barring the door; multiple students who did the same thing without getting shot through the door; those who stayed behind under windows to help move classmates injured in the drop down. Had those same people been armed, who is to say they would not have fought back? Outside of Tech's example: recent shooting (2005) at a Virginia law school (Appalachian) was cut short only because a student went to his car and retrieved a weapon of his own, and engaged the shooter. No, it's not a perfect solution, but it sure beats the alternative of fish in a barrel.

As a follow up to that, if you jump through the hoops necessary to carry a concealed weapon (at least in my state), chances are good that you're not doing so as compensation for coming up short between the legs. The steps involved are designed to weed out such people, and to educate those who think they want to be carrying a lethal weapon on their person in public about what that will mean and what it shouldn't have anything to do with. I'll concede that there may be a different demographic prevailing among student aged males who would consider carrying a weapon; but then again, the current social stigma associated with carrying a firearm in public among their peers is sufficiently strong, I'd say, as to help weed out those who aren't serious about carrying solely for defensive reasons.

Finally, your point about being caught with one's pants down is largely inapplicable here. This was one shooter working his way through a massive building full of people; your point is more applicable to the one on one mugging situation. Try again.

I certainly wouldn't say that the second amendment is unnecessary at all.

Did Bush and Blair really do what the people wanted when they invaded Iraq? I don't think so. The purpose of the szecond amendment is to give the people the ability to fight back against a government which has gone against the dictates of the constitution.

There is nothing unnecessary about that. Its that single concept in the constitution which made the USA potentially the worlds greatest democracy.

<poke>
What lets it down though is the bizarre idea that a popular vote has to be approved by a much more secretive and private vote by the electoral college. Which for some reason is under no compulsion to follow the popular vote. Odd.
</poke>

I agree, let's eliminate the Electoral College!
But, that should be another thread. I'll start one.

Dear Senna,

surely you perceive that this is not just about one single shooting, however tragic it may be? I was specifically replying to LeberMac's comment about urban areas, then commenting about the reinforcing of student and teacher desks and classroom doors.

You are most likely right about the carrying of concealed weapons, though. Those people are probably on the whole more responsible than some other gun-owners. Although it would be interesting to see in-depth analysis of this.

And, please do not think that I'm for firearm restrictions that largely benefit criminals.

First: doing what "the people wanted" != following the Constitution. You elect em, you don't get to tell em how to do their job when they're there. Impeach or STFU and wait for the next election.

Second: the Electoral College is a great thing, as it acts as a check on those morons, a.k.a. the people, who seem to think they're competent to be deciding on leadership. Nobody with any sense will take affirmative steps to abolish it; and since le gente are so damn dumb, they'll never really be able to mobilize sufficiently to remove it. Yay for apathy among hoi poli.

[EDIT fer Tosh] I'm talking about neither Tech nor Appalachian Law School specifically, as far as my point goes. I cited two concrete examples of (1) how a few accidental GSW would be less damaging than allowing a gunman to roam unchecked and (2) that those present would have the guts to react if armed so as to make that an option. Please cite examples that would show my overall take, as supported by those examples, is incorrect. [/EDIT]

I do not dispute that in scenarios like college shootings, guns carried by teachers/professors or students would have a probably positive effect on the outcome.

That would mean that concelaed carrying being allowed on campus ground would make sense, no doubt. The reinforcing of doors and desks would still make more sense and provide more protection, I'd think.

But I still think that laws on firearms should be passed with what I said in mind, namely the requiring people who may carry firearms in public (I am under the impression that concealed as well as open carrying are permitted in most states, please correct me if I'm wrong) to receive repeated training on how to use, maintain and store their guns, as well as the consequences of the use and carrying of firearms.

One of the most important things I learned in the army was that bringing a firearm into play when negotiating with an aggressor severely limits your options. I am aware of what you said earlier, namely that one cannot expect the same level of training from a civilian that you could expect from a person trained in the military, but I think that to some extent, this has to be required of the people allowed to carry a firearm.

Edit: I noticed that I stated the last paragraph without actually knowing what the current average level of expertise with firearms is in the U.S., but by extrapolating from what I know about the perception of firearms by people in the Swiss military (who are being continually trained on the use of them). It is not perfect as a system, but it generally works out well, insofar as most of those who did do military service are aware of what it means to own and having ot use an automatic or semi-automatic firearm.

Edit #2: I'll reiterate that I am not against civilians being permitted to carry and use firearms in public, I'm just very much for demanding a high level of expertise from those who do.

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=231817&cid=18833671

Not really on-topic, but I thought it would provide a laugh to help people calm down a bit.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2807602702866411553&hl=en

Now that that's out of the way...

ok, nevermind. fuck this. I'm way too sick and tired of this topic by now to write anything more of value on it, so let me just say this:

Concealed carry works. It stops crime. End-of-story FACT. Yes, crime still happens, but there's a lot less of it where people are permitted to carry arms.

When you take that away, you can only take it away from the people who care about the law in the first place. You can take it away from all the law-abiding citizens, but it is a truism that where guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

It only takes one law abiding citizen with a gun to stop a killing spree, which is the number one reason that such a killing spree has never - in all of history - happened where citizens have the right to bear arms. VTech was not an exception. Someone killed 32 people, and they did it where everyone else was unarmed.

CCW permit holders are some of the most responsible members of society. It's a stupid and baseless argument to say that letting them carry guns will result in arguments turning into shootouts. It's no easier for a criminal to obtain a CCW permit than it is for them to join the police force, so exactly who are we keeping guns away from?

The power needs to be placed in the hands of the affected body; in this case, the students. Gun control will not help and neither will any other action from outside sources, short of turning campuses into militaristic camps. The students need to be given the ability to defend themselves from these things.

Since so many people are opposed to allowing the students themselves to carry guns, I suggest encouraging them to carry non-leathal weapons. They could carry tasers or even pistols with rubber bullets. If a kid walks into a room with a gun and he gets 5 tasers stuck in him or pummeled with a barrage of rubber bullets, other people might think twice before trying the same thing. Even if he were to get a shot or two off, 1 or 2 dead is much better than 33. Even if this isn't feasible, the bottom line is that the only way to prevent these things is to give students the ability to defend themselves, not limit their freedoms through "protection".

I also think that the issue of major concern should not be how students get guns into classrooms or how other students can defend themselves, but why are students getting so fucked up that they start shooting up their schools? That's something that should be looked into.

Don't forget Charles!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

I like the part where he buys a gun from Sears that day.

Texas wasn't a concealed carry state until 1999, following the Lubby's massacre. So while people could buy firearms, particularily hunting and sporting ones, only criminals and murderers were allowed to carry them.

toshiro, you gotta love Switzerland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1566715.stm