I'm assuming the gunman did not leave a note, or tell anyone as to his reasons? ...Or the police have not found it yet.

Why would someone simply shoot up a school to any extent just to make a point?

.:suzu-chan/killijoy/Joeys Cupcake:.
.:"No time for goodbyes," he said, as he faded away. "It's hard to imagine, but one day you'll end up like me." Then he said, "If you want to stay alive, hold on for your life.":.

Police can't even identify him. After he was done, he shot himself in the face. He wasn't carrying any ID or cell phone when they found him and a search of his finger prints turnrf up no results.

I was so angry when I read about it.

What is this? It's all over the Swedish news! How can this keep happening?

I remember discussing a similar incident here before...

~ Barking at the Moon ~

Such violence and controversy... *sniffle* I'm ashamed of the human race.

So my advice to you is just to be a sweet pickle and everything will turn out for you in life - everything.

I'm going to avoid this topic...

They named the gunman; "Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting
It's kind of scary...

{---}
"And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook because my hand thinks I'm an artist but my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me"- Saturday As Usual

It's even scarier considering Cho Seung-Hui family lives 10 miles away, and Cho was a former student of Westfield High School (2 miles away from my home).
Not only that but my friend lives in Blacksburg VA, and my cousin is a student at VT and my parents friend teaches their.

That is scary. I was actually scared for Rachel N., too, when I heard about it. I know Roanoke is really close to Blacksburg.

My aunt was on the UT campus in 1966 when the second-largest college massacre occured. She spoke about how scary it was. All they knew initially was that there were gunshots, and then everyone hit the floor. It was terrifying to say the least.
The worst part of that tragedy was the shooter actually had seen a psychologist before the massacre, and the psychologist "strongly recommended" that he seek more counseling, but he couldn't force the guy into it. An unconfirmed rumor states that history has repeated itself.

It's easy to understand why the younger generation can be very angry. What's tragic is knowing that someone needs help, but they're either denied it or don't take it.
My hopes and thoughts are for the 32 families who now have one less person in their ranks. Too many people were cut down just as their lives were beginning. Who knows what kind of inventions or good works these people could have made, had they lived?

Quamp's discount manga/anime fan fiction
The Texas Conventions a Collection of artwork I've collected over various conventions.

"One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony."

From the article Crayola provided.

Are they serious?!

~ Barking at the Moon ~

I've lived in VA all my life; and when I was a kid, I used to wish that my state would be known for something interesting. I used to see places like California and Texas positively represented in movies and TV shows, but never boring old Virginia. Now our state will be known as the site of the deadliest shooting in US history. That is certainly NOT what I was hoping for.

Why does this shit keep happening? I'll tell you why: because individual human beings are becoming more and more confused, scared, and lost; while the institutions we're supposed to be able to turn to during times of confusion are becoming more and more corrupt. Nobody cares about anybody anymore. Children are brought up with no spiritual values; just worship the almighty dollar. It's especially bad in this state. The cost of living is high in VA; you have to work your ASS off just to have food and shelter, all the while being surrounded by rich redneck Republicans who look down their noses at you and say that if you only worked harder you might make something of yourself. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending this guy; he was obviously a weak-minded fool who just couldn't handle the pressure, and was too stupid to find a positive outlet for his rage. But what I am saying is that if our values as a society don't change and we don't start being truly compassionate towards our fellow man, this kind of thing is going to keep happening.

Someone should have seen this coming. I heard on the news that one of his professors was becoming increasingly disturbed by this guy's writings. Why the hell didn't he do anything about it? Why didn't he say, "Hey this kid needs help, this kid needs a little extra attention." That's what I'm talking about. People are so wrapped up in their own bullshit that they don't even notice when someone's about to snap.

I'm gonna stop here. I'll probably write a proper dissertation on the whole thing once I find out the true motives and the whole story behind it. I just feel so bad for the families and friends of the victims. What a senseless waste of life.

+++++++++++++

"If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind...
Give me the electric chair for all my future crimes."

Yeah. Seriously, people need a reality check. Some kid goes all emo and angsty. Doesn't that trigger their internal "Oh noes something must be wrong" button at all?

Also. On the topic of people being total morons, did any of you hear about the 13 year old girl who was arrested for writing "okay" on a desk at my school? That's really illogical (Someone save me from the scary princiapl!!! Help!!). Evolution? Smarter beings? I think we're evolving back into those simple little cells already.

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Brilliant.
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Shameless plugging, hurray!

The professor referred him to the school counselor so he could get some help. He went to the school counselor. Apparently, it did nothing. It doesn't matter either way, but I just thought I'd clear the record.

Anyway, Mel, I agree 100% with everything you just said.

I sniffle again. Such controversy and conflict.

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!?!?

So my advice to you is just to be a sweet pickle and everything will turn out for you in life - everything.

School counselor? Good grief. I shudder to think what they told the guy. My extensive experience with psychiatrists, therapists and counselors has convinced me that they rarely know their asses from holes in the ground. Granted, there are a couple of good ones out there, but they are so few and far between.
I think we're at a critical point here where the institutions of mental health (no pun intended) and institutions of education need to change in a big way.
School sucks, and it's driving people crazy.
We all need to start thinking in new ways and come up with a solution, so our children won't have to deal with this cycle of violence.

+++++++++++++

"If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind...
Give me the electric chair for all my future crimes."

There will always be violence, but you're absolutely right. The school system does suck and it's time for a major overhaul.

Videos exposing the details about Cho. And his manifesto.

He was actually diagnosed mentally unstable and of imminant danger to others, he had a breif stay at an institute I think but there were no problems so they let him out saying it was just depression or something.

Wow, I juat heard about it when ILR told me.

Its scary. Theres some people in my school who laughed about it.

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LIES!!! LIES AND FRUITCAKE!!!!

I find it a little difficult to sympathize about the death of 32 American college students when comparing them to the 200 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children who die every day.

Not that I'm completely indifferent about the shooting, but you develop a very different attitude when looking at it from a global perspective.

Did anyone hear about the student who filmed what he saw of the shooting on his cell phone? When reporters asked why he whipped out his phone instead of running away like everyone else, he said that he didn't feel he was in any danger. Why not? "I'm from Palestine."

Pull down the future with the one you love.
~Television.

First of all, it says all over the Nightly News that Cho was a bit of a loner and very lonely. (Repeating myself, but whatever.) Now, I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about it clearly: did anyone really know this guy? I'm being deadly serious, too. Did anyone take the time to get to know this guy at all, try to become friends with him? All you heard about was random students saying how scary he was and how frightening he could be at times. That may be true - I don't know; I wasn't there. But did anyone look past his scariness and try to be nice to him?

I'm not saying that is any excuse at all for his actions. What he did was a horrible crime, and I hope we can all benefit from the learning experiance. I'm not even sticking up for him. I'm just trying to make a point.

We are all ticking time-bombs. It doesn't matter when we begin ticking, how fast we begin ticking. One day, one of us could get pushed over the edge and plan and carry out a V-Tech shooting. It's a scary reality. It's a simple matter of time. What, you may ask, do we do to stop this? We see friends, we talk to family... But what happens when you feel like you're going to snap and you feel you have no one to turn to? No one, and so you sit and plan and buy guns or explosives or knives, and you plan a date and time, and on the date and time... you explode. You can't be reasoned with, or stopped. You just kill anything that gets in your way.

We do need to do something about this, it's true. It's a problem we can deal with, given a lot of great minds. Laws aren't going to change anything, nor is religious talk or anything else. An angry mind cannot be rationalized with, and crimes happen despite laws. What needs to happen is more education, and more talk about such subjects. People need to be told: if you feel angry or hurt or depressed, and you feel like hurting anyone/thing - DON'T BE AFRAID TO TELL SOMEONE!! Because until we begin educating people about such things, it's going to keep happening.

However, we find old Uncle Sam likes to keep things under the rug. They depend on the tabloids to help sweep huge tragedies and national "accidents" or "failures" up while feeding us the entertainment and gossip that we love. Kat is right: this isn't a serious problem compared to the war in Iraq, yet it's a bigger deal because it happened here and we can't ignore what happens here as much as we can ignore global things. Yet eventually, Mass School-Related Genocide will be swept under America's proverbial rug eventually, and forgotten until the stakes - and death count - become even larger.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a tirade against America or any other corporation. I view these as my opinions, and don't intend to insult anyone, here or on the Web. However, I am entitled to these opinions, and am using them for a discussion about this subject. I am entitled to that as an (unfortunate) United States citizen. So, I apologize again if anyone is offended - again, I do not wish to offend any one here.

.:suzu-chan/killijoy/Joeys Cupcake:.
.:"No time for goodbyes," he said, as he faded away. "It's hard to imagine, but one day you'll end up like me." Then he said, "If you want to stay alive, hold on for your life.":.

Did you hear abou the realeasing of the 32 red ballons in honnor of the people who died at VT?
They forgot one person, the gun man.
I sympathsise for Cho's family. They, just like all the other families are suffering. They lost their son, and have to take the responsibility for his actions. Not only that but their dry cleaning bussiness is closing in Chantilly. And many people here are acting as if all Korean people are "evil." I wanted to ring my friend's mothers neck for having us avoid the Koren cashier at the grocery store. People are so confused. And I wonder, has anybody done anything to reach out to Cho's family?

I'm not offended, Killi. I'm impressed. Iko has made me feel very happy, too. I'm so glad that you guys have such a firm grasp on the reality of things.

A correction: Killi, it's not genocide. Genocide is the attempted wiping out of a specific group of people. This guy was just firing at things that moved.

I'm scared now that people will jump all over anyone who seems like they might have emotional problems that could lead to violence, and any one of us could end up in the funny farm. If you paint a picture that your art teacher deems "disturbing," you could suddenly be a threat. The story I wrote that won the literary magazine contest at school could get me locked up for wanting to injure others because it ends in the main character being satisfied about beating a security guard into a coma with a baseball bat. Everyone's fantasized about destruction. Shooting, punching, blowing up a building, killing themselves. I know I have. Only .000001% of the people who think about that kind of thing, even on a regular basis, would actually go through with it.

Also, Iko, that's terrible. You live in Fairfax county, right? I went to a school in Fairfax with a large Korean population. I can't believe that people would do that there. Nobody was cruel to my Muslim friends after 9/11 there, I was so happy about that. But after one Korean out of hundreds of thousands... and Koreans are usually stereotyped as "good" immigrants. How sad.

Cho's family is actually in hiding right now very near my home. From what I hear they are being protected by police and everything. What's sickening is that a girl who lives down the street from them actually said last week that she was afraid she would get shot. That really pushed my faith in humanity down a few notches.

Pull down the future with the one you love.
~Television.