Virgina Shooting = Calls for more gun control

Now that an independant investigation has been called, heads should really begin to roll. I know every situation has 20/20 hindsight, but from the information released so far, there seem to have been more than enough 'red flags' raised with this guy in order to cause an intervention. Hell, he even spent time in an institution due to suicidal indications.

The problem I really have though, is that with a double shooting in a dorm 2+ hrs earlier, why were classes allowed to continue?? At the same time they did a terrible job of informing/alerting students to the status of the situation. That's what I am having a problem with right now. I think that it will and should get really ugly, and I think that the administration of VT has to answer some very tough questions, especially on the anniversaries of Columbine and Oklohoma Cities.

sorry if you took it as i made light of mental health. i realize it's a very serious issue and one that is often ignored and swept under the rug. this guy obviously had major problems, some kind of untreated psychosis and personality disorder. i get more what you were saying now about different societies and cultures dictating different views on how the world spins. i just wish someone could have helped him or he could have realized how badly he needed help before it came to this terrible tragedy.

This policy of "locking down" a school has to be reasessed, way to easy for unarmed innocents to fall victim to a murderer.

I'm all for thorough screening.

Hey Osterb. I agree with you 100%. This individual (based on his history) should never have been able to acquire a firearm, without extensive counselling and testing, but even then.......

What changes would you recomend to the US system of ownership, and the Canadian one (not trying to hijack the thread here, and if Osterb has tons to say about this subject, maybe he can start a new thread on the subject.

seeing as how he'd been put into a mental institution it should have been red flagged on his background check.

I think that if he had wanted to kill people, he would have gotten guns legally or otherwise - if he was that sick, then he would have found a way - it is not hard (probably even easier there than here). We have had lock down drills already in my high school (I''m not even in the city, so i don't think it would ever happen) I mean if people want to do something that bad, then they will do it no matter what llok at what they did with airplains on september 11, all we are doing is limiting our freedons more and more when somethinhg like this happens. when there is a will there is a way.

Maybe he would have gotten an illegal gun anyway, maybe he wouldn't have. But when someone uses a legally obtained gun, it makes it more difficult for us to say "If you ban guns only criminals will have guns", and easier for antis to say that if guns were illegal at least a few of these guys probably wouldn't have had them.

Your average run of the mill criminal uses an unregistered gun, but a lot of these mass killers do not have criminal backgrounds and have registered guns. This guy did, so did the shooter at Dawson College, and a number of previous ones. They do not care if the gun can later be traced. If this guy is as socially isolated as they say, I wonder if he could have found an unregistered gun to buy very easily. we will never know. I know that if I had to buy a gun, particularly a handgun, under the table today, I would have absolutely no idea where to get one, short of wandering around seedy bars and just asking likely looking candidates out of the blue.

There was a school shooting at a law school in Virginia 5 yrs ago with very different results. Seems that the law forbidding guns on campus came into effect 1 yr after this incident.

www.worldnetdaily.com/new...E_ID=55326

See also:

thecanadiansentinel.blogs...an-at.html

So why is it again that law abiding citizens should not be allowed to carry??

If you can find a copy of this sunday's Calgary Sun, or look on-line, check Ian Robinson's column about gun control freaks. He hit the nail square.

Here's the link to that Ian Robinson column in the Calgary Sun.

calsun.canoe.ca/News/Colu...2-sun.html