Tuesday, April 17, 2007

surprise, surprise.

sure enough, it's started already. R Mildred notes, wrt the VA shootings:

Jack Thompson however, on FOX (of course), has already blamed video games for it.

MSNBC video has an interview with one of hte injured from the attack, says that the assailant was "asian", what ever the hell that means...

...It turns out that the school didn't close down after the first lot of shooting, in which two students were killed, because they thought it was merely a domestic violence thing - because two dead bodies is apparently normal at Virgin Tech - and so waited two hours to actually inform other students that maybe they should know about it... by email.

At which point the second killing spree which took the lives of the other 30 people had already started.

17 comments:

Sassywho said...

catch the article with a picture of the murder girl titled "The girl who led to massacre"? if only women weren't so evil we wouldn't have so many gun-toting sociopaths. grrrrr.

belledame222 said...

:headdesk:

for the sweet love of christ. and here i thought fleetingly that the MRA troll basically saying it was all her fault just might maybe be an anomaly.

Sassywho said...

I think the sex/race/gun issue will get the Imus-treatment, must do something symbolic and quick... a good piece of legislation will do. Oh wait, we already have stalking laws? We've already got gun-control? We've already cracked down on immigration? I know, let's make a don't blame the victim law, yeah, that'll do it.

fuck

Zan said...

Yeah. See, I'm not getting why everyone is freaked out that they sent out the warning by email. Granted, they sent it too late, but still. Do they not think, hey, these are college kids. And you know, kids today, they're hooked up to the tubes of the internets, I hear. Frankly, they were likely to get to MORE students by doing what they did -- using email and text messages -- than by, what? Printing a notice in the newspaper? I don't get it. They got RAs to keep those inside who were still inside and tried to get to the others as best they could. I don't get that drama.

Of course, waiting two hours to lock down the campus and, at the very least, secure the other buildings, wasn't a good idea. I'm assuming the police were already on scene two hours later. I hope. I don't know, this whole thing is just fucked up. And blaming the victim or blaming video games or -- wait for it -- blaming immigration! makes no fucking sense. How about we blame the shooter? You know, the guy who pulled the trigger?

(And the fact that this guy was a legal resident alien is going to be brought up again and again. Just wait. *sigh*)

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sassywho said...

someone make sure anonymous doesn't have a gun. nut.

Jennifer said...

A domestic dispute ending in murder is considered within the normal range of male on female violence, not worth getting your hair in a mess for. This has to stop.

Jennifer said...

wow. the crazies are out in force.

I have a crazy troll on my blog, too. Very committed.

belledame222 said...

oh christ, that one again? sie's been spambotting like everywhere for a while now, with these paranoiac longass rants about aliens and "favor" and so on. i think i'll delete, i'm getting bored with it.

belledame222 said...

...but hey, there's an argument against porn that i hadn't thought of: it makes the gods (plural) and/or clones angry. i think that's it.

"send IN the clones..."

Anonymous said...

I guess women should humor their stalkers for the good of us all...

R. Mildred said...

Frankly, they were likely to get to MORE students by doing what they did -- using email and text messages -- than by, what?

I hate to point out the disturbingly obvious and embarass you like this: but there's a PA system in most college buildings - any warning that you need to be on the look out for a gun toting nutter that requires people checking their inbox is kinda missing the whole point of warning people about gun toting murderers loose on campus - and the point being that people should be warned of the gun toting maniacs being loose on the campus.

The letter they sent was seriously lite weight as well - they tell people to "be cautious", not specifically mind you, just in general, which of course does cover the mad man who'd killed two people already and was wandering around somewhere nearby, thought it'd have been nice if they'd mentioned some specifics on what they should be cautious of exactly. Which sort of adds a slightly surreal twist to it all, like if they'd calmly informed the student body that, in the event of the halls running with the blood of the innocent, one should wear those special little rubber booties to stop your socks getting stained.

I'm assuming the police were already on scene two hours later.

Well yes, they then initiated an ethnic profiling system that succeeded in them arresting a completely randomised asian student with a camera - this was while the shooting was still underway, because one cna only assume it is normal for the sound of gunfire to ring out across the engineering building, and so the police felt htat arresting the nearest asian guy hwo was sort of wearing the right clothes was a good way to waste time until they found this murderer guy that was apparently wandering around somewhere.

all of which thereby makes the "cops are fucking idiots" quota for the whole depressing event.

Bellatrys winz by the way

Anonymous said...

It's been interesting listening to folks talk about the incident. We all know that different groups are going to take different approaches. I am eager to wait for the full details to come out and understand what can be learned from this.

Thanks for sharing some of what folks are saying.

And R. Mildred, do you have any statistical evidence that PA systems are still in effect at most colleges today?

Anonymous said...

Even if PA systems aren't, there are these crazy devices... damnit... what are they called again?

Oh, right. Telephones.

Yeah, they've got telephones that they could have used to call to the various bulidings on campus and alerted them to the possibility of a gun-toting murderer. At which point the information could have been distributed to the various classrooms and offices, etc. E-mail isn't a bad start, but picking up the phone wouldn't have hurt, either.

Zan said...

Yeah, my college didn't have PA systems. Hell, none of the ones down here do, as far as I know.

Also, apparently the police thought they had the 'right guy'. The first person killed was a girl, so they got her boyfriend, who of course was the right guy because everyone knows how common it is to kill your girlfriend...

*sigh* And they did tell the RAs. So that's something. But still.

Deoridhe said...

*headdesk* So, in other words, a man shot a woman and her neighbor and people assumed it must be her known boyfriend because that's just how things happen (tm)?

WTF????

And when it isn't him, when the shootings continue elsewhere, the media is sufficiently baffled by the idea that a woman might ACTUALLY be killed by someone who is NOT her significant other or an ex-significant other, that they report someone who she may not have even known is her "ex-boyfriend".

WTF???

I'm still baffled that his roommates say they knew he was stalking women and yet nothing was done. But no, taking stalking more seriously - we can't do that! Let's just lock up all the immigrants with mental illnesses!!! *eyes roll so hard she's blinded*

R. Mildred said...

Oh jesus christ, I thought I was being breathy and misremembering the email, but here's what it said:
"The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case."

I think people don't get that in a situation like this, it is always better to be too paranoid than not enough - if you've got two people already dead and the murderer on the loose still - especially if you had to shut the place down a while ago becuase of an escaped convict in the area - you close the place down becuase you can always open it up again later and act a bit embarassed if it wasn't entirely neccesary, but you cannot bring the dead back to life if more people are killed because you didn't want to seem paranoid or something.

This applies to death threats as well btw - if the death threats aren't real well then looking silly becuase you over reacted is one thing, if they are real and you ignore them and someone you like dies, that's a different thing entirely.

And R. Mildred, do you have any statistical evidence that PA systems are still in effect at most colleges today?

Why would they have taken out the PA system? if your sole means of communicating urgent issues to the students is by opt-in systems like the email network - or if they were being really high-tech they'd have had some sort of emergency txt messaging system that would be sent out to all students (but it'd still miss students who had their phones off because they were in class or something), maybe a quick little thing like "mrdrer on luse, rn awy" or something - or by the more effective means of foot messengers, I'd have htought that the H&S people would explode from the impending fear of a lawsuit that would be waiting to happen because the instant the school starts filling with some noxious gas or gets set on fire (the fire alarm system is another alternative btw) and the administration has to send for thyripedes or some emergency jehovah's witnesses to go from class to class and spread the word, is the instant that litigation starts wending it's way through the courts.

Oh and to zan - If I came across a bit condescending sorry about that, no offense intended, I am paranoid and so am kinda flumoxxed by how people could not react to a double homicide a damn site more harshly - what most people would call my "instincts" (though they're technically reactions) would have had me closig htat place and asking people to hold up in the basements with guns, hundred packs of condoms and any snugglable lovers they could arrange.