Monday, April 16, 2007

Tragedy at Virginia Tech


I have little new to add except my condolences to the family and friends of those affected by this tragedy.
As I flipped through the channels I caught a minute or two of Bill O'Reilly on Fox News interviewing Michell Malkin. The fat mick was saying that Virginia Tech was negligent because they didn't shut down the university after the first shootings were reported. Fuck him. In hindsight maybe they should have frisked every person who tried to enter the campus today or maybe the Chinese shouldn't have invented gun powder. He reminded me, in case I had forgotten - which I hadn't, why I hate him. Because he's the sort of prick that shows up at a tragedy to second guess and finger point before the facts are known and the spilled blood is mopped up.
Beware my friends, beware those will try to make political hay out of this. Some will say that gun control could have prevented it. Others will say the campus being a gun free zone invited attack. The truth is that nothing can stop someone from hurting others if he or she is prepared to do so. For now let's tend to the dead and the injured and leave the blame game for another day.

5 comments:

zaphod said...

It's easy to dislike O'Reilly. That doesn't mean he's wrong. The very fact the campus was a gun free zone means the the school owns an even greater responsibility for the safety of the students.

You didn't address the substance of his remarks. I guarantee you someone will have to. O'Reilly won't be the only person making that claim.

El Duderino said...

As to the substance of his remarks, I would suggest that it is very cheap and easy to second guess a tragedy. If every campus or town with 25,000+ people were to shut down every time a crime occurred, just in case it's yet another crazed gunman on a killing spree, O'Reilly would be among the first loudmouths to condemn that approach as well. NO ONE THING could have been done to prevent this. A no gun policy didn’t work. We will never know if a sprinkling of armed students, faculty etc. would have lessened the killings. Sending the murderer to student counseling didn’t work. Imprisoning bizarre loner foreign nationals is frowned upon by civil libertarians.
You have been to UCONN, imagine making that population aware of a campus emergency and getting them to act accordingly. People waking up at all hours of the day, going to class, work, and events by foot, bike, car, bus, horse etc. no one hundred of them listening to or watching the same media source. Let’s say it works and you lock down the students in their dorms and classrooms. Where was the killer? Was he already in the classroom building? Still in the dorm? Nobody knows, especially the fat bastard O’Reilly.

zaphod said...

You hate O'Reilly. We got that already. It's pretty much beside the point. Stop blowing smoke.

We're not talking about every time a crime occurs. We're talking about an extreme circumstance where a gunman had just killed and was on the loose.

So what if everyone isn't listening to the same media source. That means you don't use every effort to inform people of the situation anyway?

You're right we don't know if a sprinkling of armed individuals would have lessened the killings. But thirty-three people are dead. I think now might a good time to consider alternatives. If not now, when?

Throwing our hands up in the air and saying nothing could have been done to prevent this is the cheap way out. Maybe nothing could have been done but I don't know that. And you don't know that either.

El Duderino said...

"We're not talking about every time a crime occurs. We're talking about an extreme circumstance where a gunman had just killed and was on the loose.”

No. You’re talking about that. At the time NO ONE knew at the time that it was an extreme circumstance. Nor did anyone know that the gunman was still on campus and looking to kill more people. Your right, I don’t like O’Reilly and right now I’m not so fond of you. Can’t you see that both of you are using information gained after the fact to make judgments about who should have done what during the event?

“So what if everyone isn't listening to the same media source. That means you don't use every effort to inform people of the situation anyway?"

Really? How? Enthrall me with your acumen. Explain how to notify over 25,000 people each coming from different places and doing different things that what? That two people had been shot in a “domestic dispute” and the gunman is now on campus looking to shoot 29 others? Great but no one knew that at the time.

zaphod said...

No, I'm not using information gained after the fact. The initial killings were enough to issue SOME kind of alarm. In my book two people gunned down on campus is an extreme situation already.

I don't know how you inform 25,000 people. Because something is hard you don't inform anybody? Most people have cell phones, right? Is it that hard to send out a text message to everybody you have on file? I imagine at any given time a significant percentage of a college's population is online. Send emails out and those people will be notified. And text messages and emails have the advantage of precision. Lots of people would have the same information. Maybe you only end of reaching 20% or even only 10% of the population. Still, 2500 people is a lot more than zero people.

What if the school knew tornadoes were in the area? Wouldn’t they have responded? This was the human equivalent of a tornado.

We already know how not informing the campus worked. For the life of me I don't understand why now might not be a good time to consider alternatives. If not now, when?