What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.
As Good As It Gets
As I laboured through Cho Seung-Hui’s final video testament of how all those rich kids with their trust funds and Mercedeses and their debauchery had brought this divine retribution on themselves and how he like Jesus Christ was going to inspire generations of the weak and defenceless, I felt revulsion and pity for that asshole in equal measure.
Revulsion that this rabid, delusional sub-human who had snuffed out the lives of 32 innocents in a few hours of bloody mayhem, was ultimately, through the offices of an exceedingly irresponsible NBC, getting the attention he so desperately craved, with possibly a few similarly sick degenerates looking at the footage and thinking “Wow, even I can be famous”.
Pity because as the unexceptional son of poor Asian immigrant parents, his life had been and was likely to be a litany of rejections and taunts. (“In high school, Cho Seung-Hui almost never opened his mouth. When he finally did, his classmates laughed, pointed at him and said: “Go back to China.”)[Source]
Desperately wanting to be a part of the tantalizing world of hot chicks, fast cars, secure futures and happening parties and yet consigned, on account of his ordinariness and pedigree, to standing on the sidelines ‘to look but not touch’ (he took pictures of girls with his cellphones), his hatred for everything that lay out of his reach had increased proportionally to his desire for it till one day he went round the bend.
People who seek to protect the world from the depredations of sin and corporeal pleasure are not rare: we see them everyday in the newspapers. They come out on the streets, offended at every peck, kiss and Valentine’s Day card; frothing at the mouth like Cho Seung-Hui about decadence and moral corruption when it is plainly obvious that the reason they are so pissed off is because they are excluded from the pleasures of the “debauchery” they profess to despise.
But at least in India, the extent of the nuisance these farts cause is marginal: forcibly making people tie rakhis, burning Valentine’s Day cards and the like. And that’s because they are unable to walk into a store and come out with a shopping bag full of automatic weapons.
In USA, however that is not the case. Propped up by the billions of dollars from the powerful gun lobby and provided protection by the literalism of conservatives who consider the Second Amendment of the US constitution (A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed) sacrosanct even though the historical reasons (the prevalent lawlessness of the times) for which the founding fathers advocated such a measure has long ceased to be relevant, objective conditions continue to exist in the country for loons like Cho Seung-Hui , after being subject to minimal background checks, to get their hands on enough hardware to fight a small war.
And for this reason, I am unable to decide who to despise more: the rambling idiot holding the gun and looking into the camera, or the vested interest fat-cats who put the gun in the pervert’s hand and profited off the lives and families destroyed by this most random and senseless act of violence.
The Greatbong Blog & Podcast 
It’s absolutely sad!! I dont pity that sick man!
Very well written and you hit the nail on the head!!
Even apart from “people who seek to protect the world from the depredations of sin and corporeal pleasure”, campus violence in India is not uncommon. The difference from USA being (a) less guns and (b) political motives rather than psychological. Student groups with different political affiliations clash almost on a daily basis across India in various colleges. No massacres happen, true. But lots of people end up with bloody noses and broken bones.
Well some part of the blame should be put in the society which marginalises such people. Of course, I am not condoning what he did but…..
It’s ironic; as you correctly pointed out, the necessity for easy access to weapons no longer exists in the US, but they are still available for the Choes of the world (or rather the US), whereas in India, if you think about it, in the vast rural hinterland, it is definitely something that one can argue in favour of, but no politician would dream of arming the masses against their own hired goons.
Touche GB. I am yet to hear a pro-gun argument that makes sense except its fun (for deer hunters & man-child navy seal worshippers) and its allowed by the constitution. Anybody who thinks that an army (Who????????????) that breaches US defenses can be held back by the militia must be watching too much of Military Raj and Independence Day sort of movies.In the book Freakonomics, the author argues that swimming pools are more fatal than guns ,drowning accidents being more common statistically. Fair enough, but the key difference I think is that it is difficult to drown 39 other people along with yourself.I am sure mountaineering would be even more fatal but that is hardly the issue, for the same reason of zero impact on those who do not take the plunge.
On the issue of the sting of others having it better, unfortunately it is part of the mental makeup of most people. We do know of certain doctrines whose mass appeal kind of rests on this instinct to pull down others rather than uplift oneself. Mobs are built out of negative energies and not positive intent. No one can be as blind and devastating as a self righteous man as he sees no wrong in his actions, has a unipolar worldview and has taken uncertainty out of his life.
At least in the US this man’s views are treated as an absurdity. In certain other countries, if this guy reigns himself back a little bit, he can go mainstream with his views if not his actions.
i don’t support the fact that he killed ppl, but i somewhat agree with his sentiments. the society is indeed evil. it’s so easy to get away putting the entire blame on him (or on the gun law), describing him as a “rabid, delusional sub-human” and what not.. that’s where our thoughts end, and the next killer is born.
I was saddened by the shootings, and with newspapers highlighting the ‘debauchery’ and ‘Mercedes’ it made the guy come across as someone who was jealous. But I finally got to read the entire transcript of the guy from what he had send to NBC, I cannot help but feel sad for him. Its sort of a sin to feel like this, but I feel that this guy was driven to his breaking point. I don’t justify his means but he must have gone through a lot. May his soul too find peace which he probably missed in his short lifetime.
The Point is well taken…
I think it is the gun lobby which is to blame…
“If the guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns”
Cliched but true
This idiot’s got a pen!
is that the next thing we r going to ape about the U S ?
@ Greatbong,
>> the extent of the nuisance these farts cause is marginal
Is that you, GreatBong ?? Its not that marginal..
>> they are so pissed off is because they are excluded from the pleasures of the “debauchery†they profess to despise.
Are you sure ? How sure that this is the reason ? How did you come to this conclusion?
I am not sure about this, Shilpa Shetty would have slapped/pushed away some desi Bollywood actor who would have been in place of Richard Gere.. I might seem to be countering myself as compared to the above statement, but the hypocrisy is there..
>> or the vested interest fat-cats who put the gun in the pervert’s hand and profited off the lives and families destroyed by this most random and senseless act of violence.
I agree with Gaurav here. Terrorists have guns.. what about that.. There have been so many stories on Discovery/NatGeo regarding someone defending themselves from an armed attacker with a loaded Shotgun kept at home.
It becomes easy for us sitting here and trying to psycho-analyze an event in retrospect. But, do we really know what made him go round the bend…invariably you will find that there are other socio-economic parameters that made him the person he was. How ever much we debate about it, I believe that ‘nature’ of the person combined with ‘nurture’ destroyed the person and made him act the way he did.
Without condoning what he did and with utmost respect n sympathies to the dead and their kins, I believe that society as a whole is responsible for incidents like these.
My two pennies..
Rahul
@Razer
Ah, the gun lobby’s POV. Valid, and logical seemingly. Till someone points out the number of accidental gun related deaths every year in homes in the US. You can look up the stats yourself. Also you have pointed out cases where homes have been defended by people with guns, but why exclude the equally numerous cases of mistaken identity where the gun owners have shot tramps, kids, and trespassers mistaking them for attackers?
The point is that having a gun gives you false bravado and in a tense situation, you are more likely to shoot than think and exacerbate a situation rather than solve it.
You seem to imply that there is something other than just envy at the core of the protesters who burn Valentine cards and protest Shilpa Shetty’s “kiss”. Care to elucidate what? What is your alternative theory? That they are driven by ideology? Or piousness perhaps? Laughable!
@Arnab
Is is equally true that people are pushed over the edge when they have been picked on, bullied, traumatized, neglected, abused all their lives. This might have been such a case. But while this does not absolve him of the responsibility (I am no bleeding heart lib), I also would like to mention the fact that there were enough warning signs about this guy that no one paid attention to.
I am not just talking about “macabre” plays etc. That’s bullshit. By that standard Quentin Tarantino should be a mass murderer. But I am talking of the fact that he was deemed mentally unsound earlier, and had been reported for stalking and other quasi-illegal behavior, but that these records had been sealed so that no one knew of these warning signs in the University. I especially worry about the “mentally unsound” part. This means that right where you are, in Stony Brook, or any other college/univ, there might be other “mental” cases roaming free because the Univ either does not have access to or are not allowed to act on prior mental health reports!
The point is that this could have been avoided, with a bit more free sharing of information.
Now the problem is that whether in school or college, any boy/girl who shows some creativity of the dark (noir-ish) type in literature or poetry or painting will be looked upon with suspicion and possibly reported to authorities as a potential danger to society…
Now that’s sad.
>>> … provided protection by the literalism of conservatives who consider the Second Amendment of the US constitution … even though the historical reasons (the prevalent lawlessness of the times) for which the founding fathers advocated such a measure has long ceased to be relevant
One could similarly argue that when the Founding Fathers argued for freedom of speech they didn’t include porn or religious attacks, etc. You’re on a slippery slope here, because reinterpreting one amendment opens the others to interpretation too– and you might not like what some of those reinterpretations do.
Also, your comparison of Cho with India’s beloved Valentine’s Day Killjoys is completely specious. Cho was insane (as far as I can see) and working alone. The Shiv Sena/VHP killjoys aren’t, and there’s little case for arguing that they are being killjoys because miniskirt-wearing girls won’t date them. They’re the boots-on-the-ground of a pretty large machine (the Sangh) that has a very clear agenda — to assert their idea of Hindu culture on society, at the expense of Muslim or ‘Western’ influences. You may not like their agenda, but they are very (clinically) sane.
Yes, having guns available at stores makes it more likely that mentally ill people will be able to access guns. What this probably means is that the ‘Check if you have a history of mental illness’ on a gun-buying form should be done away with and replaced with something that is more effective — like a waiting period, maybe, while the antecedents of the buyer is checked with national and state mental health records.
Btw, it’s not like shooting sprees don’t occur in countries with gun control, see for example this case in Germany: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1952869.stm
Similarly Swiss citizens have lots of guns (google for [switzerland guns]), but gun crime there is negligible. To ignore the social factors that cause gun crime and focus on the gun reeks of simplistic “the state will protect us” mai-baap sarkar thinking. And the students at VT (whose friends were being shot as law enforcement did nothing) know how well *that* works.
In India, not getting hands on a firearm has more to do with the financial status of a delusional character like Cho. Believe me, there are a plenty Cho’s roaming around us but in a place where arranging for a square meal is still a mountainesque task for majority of the population, buying a gun is out of the question. Getting a gun, if you have enough Gandhi prints is very easy in India. In US, they could at least track the store from where the gun was bought.
With increasing buying capacity, I am sure the day is not far when you can see a whole lot of Cho’s in India.
was waiting fr sumun to say that! there were, are and always will be ppl who go over the edge for one reason or the other. its the invisible gun-lobby and the politicians they buy, who are responsible for the 32 deaths. its their debaunchery that shud be the target of the families who have so tragically lost their loved ones. if americans have ANY sense, they’ll realise its time to have stricter gun laws. they owe it to the dead.
@ashish
agree.
Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine convincingly demolishes much of the conventional wisdom associated with such incidents. (Don’t judge this work based on his 911 propoganda, please.)
Freaks (or diseased souls, if you may) are not uncommon, regardless of whether or not they were pushed to the limit by the society. The problem, as GB pointed out, was that there were no checks and balances to curb the guy’s actions. This was a classic case of the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up. Only, it just didn’t lead to an adverse event – it led to a catastrophe
I say blame the NRA. Why do kids go crazy here and start killing students in an innocent school? School shootings have happened before too. If it was not so god damn easy to get a gun, crazy people would think there are other things to vent out their frustration, like slash their own wrist or something. People who really wanted to go ‘postal’ would find a gun illegally anyway. If there was ever a case who was so tormented and burdened by the society, wealth and want not, would have thought of killing other people, then went to get a gun and saw how bloody hard it was to get a gun, then would have sat down in his bathroom and slit open his wrists.
I think they (the smarter people) need to see why psychological breakdown cases prefer to go on a shooting spree.
I don’t think there will be any relaxations on gun laws. The NRA has been around since the second amendment. That amendment has probably been around for a 100 years, that is 25% of America’s total history.
Sahn writes
Precisely what I have been thinking. Anyone who saw Reservoir Dogs will vouch for that. His latest production Hostel is really gory.
Reading reports about this incident, I have realised one difference between the US and India. In the US people seem to be paranoid about the network channels airing this news/videos lest some other lunatic tries to top Choe’s feat. Whereas in India, after the NOIDA killings, the media frezy made us more aware of multiple other such things that happen in India. Yet, I dont think we were paranoid that now someone will try and top the killing stats in Noida.
The point is not that there might be less number of mentally deranged people in India but that there is more trust in the societal structure which makes us believe (maybe hope) that such things dont happen again. Maybe the Indian social structure limits not just the positive things like entrepreneurship etc but also the negative things. You think?
In the defence of NBC , they only did what you have done. Just different methods.
My 2 cents.
@Gaurav
Yes, but then you would know that anyone having a gun was an outlaw!
The gun psychology comes from the basic american mindset that the best way to prevent conflict is to arm both sides equally. I am not really sure that is something which works. In a case like this, it would not have been any deterrent even if he knew that everyone was armed. And sitting in our armchairs, we do not even know if the death toll would be lower or rather higher as students started shooting everywhere not knowing who started it.
It would be rather naive to expect that all the students in a language course would be trained in the use of arms and would use it correctly. Even professional combatants with years of rigorous training make mistakes in battlefields, you think that starry eyed students wearing holsters in school would single out the attacker and neutralize him? You must be quite delusional to think that!
Yes, gun control will not prevent people from obtaining guns, just make it a bit tougher, and that might be all we need. It anyway does not make sense why anyone would want to own an automatic weapon like a Glock. As far as I know (and I might be totally wrong), it is just the NSG, MARCOS and other elite special forces in India that use the Glock, it is not something you shoot deer or a bunch of thieves with! There is no conceivable reason why you would sell automatic weapons over the counter. Even if they did sell the gun, why would you sell 50 rounds of lethal ammo with it?
I mean, if you think an army is going to invade you and you will need an armoury to protect yourself, that itself should automatically qualify you as having something wrong with your head right?
So lots of people are bullied in school. A thick accent, glasses, physical deformities…kids can be cruel and insensitive. Most people who go through that, however, do not end up being killers.
There is no excuse for Cho. What motivated him to kill has motivated others to excel. It is all a question of how one reacts to one’s experiences.
Nor will any good come out of this. Gun control will not happen. Schools and offices will not become safer. Every few years, another Cho, Eric or Dylan (the Columbine kids) will wreak havoc, and a week later it will all be forgotten.
Cest les vous. It sucks.
Watching “Bowling for Columbine”, I realised that the pro-gun activists are pro-gun without a valid reason. “Take out the middleman (the police) and protect yourself and yours”. Bah!! That’s not argument enough to have 45mm under your pillow or hell, an automatic weapon in your cupboard. It’s surprising how the pro-gunners don’t see that the gun is deadly, especially in the wrong hands and how the hell do you decide which are the right hands… People get mad. Humans are psychotic at some level. Giving them easy access to guns is the stupidest thing you can ever do.
Lot of vested interest in keeping the gun lobby happy….both pro and cons arguement…say i have a middle path…instead of licensing/regulating guns…why don’t we license bullets on a very strict basis, guns without bullets are a piece of metal, if we can regulate bullets, say one bullet only per gun only, wont that be a good control, gun makers , NRA will be happy, while killing will come down as bullets will be in short supply…..just a thought
“Yes, but then you would know that anyone having a gun was an outlaw!”
And what are you going to do then, perhaps taunt them …..
“The gun psychology comes from the basic american mindset that the best way to prevent conflict is to arm both sides equally.”
Wrong ! The philosophy is to be prepared to defend yourself, you can not rely on others to defend you.
“In a case like this, it would not have been any deterrent even if he knew that everyone was armed.”
I think he would have been deterred, he was aiming for heroic in his deranged manner getting shot in ass is not the best way to do so.
“It would be rather naive to expect that all the students in a language course would be trained in the use of arms and would use it correctly. Even professional combatants with years of rigorous training make mistakes in battlefields, you think that starry eyed students wearing holsters in school would single out the attacker and neutralize him? You must be quite delusional to think that!
”
People usually take training for shooting, there is nothing delusional in thinking that they would be able to tackle when the need arises. Basically it is the question of attitude. Middle class Indians are so scared of power, it is impossible for them to comprehend that someone may use the power responsibly.
“Yes, gun control will not prevent people from obtaining guns, just make it a bit tougher, and that might be all we need. It anyway does not make sense why anyone would want to own an automatic weapon like a Glock. As far as I know (and I might be totally wrong), it is just the NSG, MARCOS and other elite special forces in India that use the Glock, it is not something you shoot deer or a bunch of thieves with! There is no conceivable reason why you would sell automatic weapons over the counter. Even if they did sell the gun, why would you sell 50 rounds of lethal ammo with it? ”
This is all right as long as you can legislate that thugs and rapists commit crime using only nan-chaku and pepper spray.
“I mean, if you think an army is going to invade you and you will need an armoury to protect yourself, that itself should automatically qualify you as having something wrong with your head right?”
This is a strawman
@GB
In US the there can never be a gun control because that is the way the society has developed. You and me and many others understands the invalidity of the second amendment but to make it through the head of these lunatics will take ages or may be many such tragedies. What irks me most where is the PROPER BACK GROUND CHECK. If they had a process of checking the back ground thoroughly then any person with little sense would have known that this guy does not deserve to have even a spoon in his hand, forget a gun. There is no shortage of resources to dig out every bit of information of a gun holder and YES if a person wants to have a gun they cannot argue for the right to privacy. Nobody should be able to go to a store and buy a gun, the people who are interested to possess a gun should enroll themselves and a thorough check should be done and even then I am sure incidents will happen but may reduce a lot.
The general apathy to everything which is not your own among the people of this country has to change. This guy was crying out loud that he needed help and yet not enough was done to really help him. His parents were ignorant so they could not fathom the extend of his cruel mind but what about the rest of the society? This general lack of compassion among the people of this country often makes us (I mean my family) wonder whether we should continue to live in this country or go back to our own land. This rush, always to do something or get something done all the time where nobody has time to look around and reach out for others is really missing.
You know we have a guy from certain country in our research lab. Believe me nobody talks to him, nobody asks him for lunch out, he comes and goes at his own time mostly avoiding the vibrant time in the lab. Last Christmas I remember him telling me that he is feeling very lonely because the only thing he would be doing during the holidays is work. I felt bad for him then but I did not really call him to my place even though I had several get togethers. This tendency of us to be always with the Best and seen around with the Best has made us forget that we should not leave anybody behind.
I am sorry for this long note but someway I was unburdening my self.
Exactly my sentiments.
S
@all who support GUNS
Say a situation, where a teacher is armed and he shoots the guy after he just manages to burge into a class room and shoot a fellow student. Don’t you think today we would be condeming the teacher also and hold him at par with the shooter who burged in. So really arming everybody is not a solution. How can the teacher judge when it is time to shoot?
Hain?! Did my comment get eaten up by spam filters hehe!
S
Suzi,
No atleast I will not be condemning the teacher.
And for the last time, there is no such thing as arming both the sides, scums will find the arms anyhow you dont need to arm them.
On the other hand background checks are essential for purchase of gun, as prasenjeet pointed out
@Gaurav
It is kind of tough to respond to you, especially with this kind of a format. But as I could understand from your response, you are of the opinion that we are in need of sophisticated weapons to defend ourselves. When you carry that argument too far, ther only way we can be safe is if we barricade our homes, lay mines outside, arm ourselves with rocket launchers and machine guns, because we can be invaded anytime.
And I agree, that notion would not be too absurd, but that is exactly why we humans organized as a society and founded cities and eventually countries, so that they could get on with life and hand off their security to a professional military and police force funded by part of what they earn (as tax). If you feel that the government you elected cannot fulfil the duty assigned to them of protecting your life and property, it is then probably time for you to think about changing the government.
If you do not empower that regulating force to control the possession of items which are beyond the reason of self-defence, then I guess it is kind of tough to entrust anyone with any job. I am not going to take the argument much further, seeing that you have a view that is completely orthogonal to mine and one that is kind of tough for me to comprehend.
I see securing people as a job that we let someone else do. I pay people to write software for me, I pay people to protect me. Yes, I could do it all myself, but then I would not be able to do things that I am good at. I say this in the context of your argument that students should and would be well trained in the responsible use of these weapons. Contrary to what you might believe, military school might not be the best place to be.
About what you said
I am not sure what you are trying to say here, that I am not able to comprehend responsible use of power since I am from the Indian middle class probably? It is kind of strange in this context, because in my home, strangely there have always been weapons. Heirlooms included handed down battle and ceremonial swords, to modern firearms. Not to give a personal twist to this or anything, but my father still has a restricted bore handgun that he is legally authorized to posses. And growing up, seeing him handle them, I believed that it is best left out of most people’s hands. There is a realization of the power of a weapon that comes out of seeing it being used and I would prefer that the responsibility of using it lie with people whose job it is to use it.
I refuse to fire a gun, and in your world, I would not survive too many days, maybe mothers are a breed that is undesirable in that scheme of things.
@Suzi
You cannot *demand* help/compassion.
In life-threatening situations, people do make wrong judgments, but that is far better than a situation where the teacher dies, waiting for the police!
I agree with Gaurav in this –
“Middle class Indians are so scared of power, it is impossible for them to comprehend that someone may use the power responsibly”
Hold so true for you!
This is the price you pay for living in a free society. Banning guns is not going to prevent any of this. Someone who really wants to kill a lot of people will just move to the next best option, of which there are plenty, as McVeigh et al. demonstrated. They didn’t use any guns, it was all commonly available material. Anyway, how is 30 people getting killed by a crazy dude any worse than hundreds that die in car accidents every day? Did the person who died in the car accident have it coming? Was that any less unfair? This is life folks, get used to it. There are risks you take when you walk out the door of your home. Human behavior is unpredictable, period. You can try all you want but there’s no way you can stop a crazy guy from killing a lot of people once in a while, in a free society.
@ Gaurav
If the shooter would not have shot at anyone yet and still the teacher would shoot him as a premptive measure then would you condemn the teacher? because it will be hard for the teacher to interpret whether he is just posing an empty threat or a real one. I am sure under such circumstance we would be condemning the teachr and may take away his professional rights like barring him from the campus or something like that. Also there were times when we have condemned the police force when they may have shot someone indiscrimintely assuming the victim to be armed.
@ Gaurav
I understand that you are not in favour of arming both sides but your are also not in favour of outlawing gun? So what is your stand on the issue?
Suzi,
No even then I will not condemn the teacher, if some guy points gun he is asking for it. By the way I am not sure that allowing guns in class room is such a good idea.
@JR
Probably equally true of a non-free society right?
The only argument here I think is whether there exists an ability to control the number of people killed. Gaurav et al believe it can be done by arming everyone. While others in this thread believe it can be done by controlling the easy availability of weapons that can cause a large number of deaths.
But yeah, saying that things happen, makes you sound like Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother Shivpal Yadav who famously said about the Noida Nithari case
.
Whether it is controlling weapons, or the identification and assistance of the mentally ill, as a society we have a duty to go beyond “it happens” and see to it if we can find ways and means to prevent it from happening.
@ Gaurav
What are background checks going to achieve? See to it that a person who stole a loaf of bread or a mentally ill person is not allowed to defend themselves? So, by that argument, they pretty much deserve to die!
@ Anon
Middle class Indians do not have a problem comprehending the use of power responsibly. They are used to seeing power abused irresponsibly. So, they trust people they know to be responsible to use that power. Dont drag middle class India into this please …
@ Anon
What I find amusing about you is again you are ready to give the gun to the teacher in apprehension that he is going to protect a class full of students. Thats the irony, and you dont see you are contradicting yourself, so much for my middle class Indian mind!
@Anonymouse
It can happen in non-free societies too but it depends on how non-free the society is. At an extreme it can be prevented. Say you have a police state where you are searched anytime you enter a public space, and randomly searched as you move about. You can prevent these mass killings to a large degree but at a great expense to personal freedom.
And yes, we should be looking for things that can be done better but we should be extremely hesitant to curtail a right that 99.9999% of the population have not abused to prevent the killing of a few.
I think Drugs like Prozac is also responsible.
One could have said that he butchered the students because of the trauma and humiliation faced at the institution. But he opened fire and killed people randomly instead of punishing selected few. So, his is the case of a deranged, frustrated chump.
America has enough American dorks who are too in the ‘you can look but can’t touch’ category, they don’t go buy guns and open fire blindly…
But there is an element of truth to his ‘Mercedes, trust fund, gold necklace’ rambling…
Saddening tragedy for the families. And CNN couldn’t have done a worse job.
How blinkered can you get? So, lack of gun-control is to blame for this massacre and no other factor? Jesus H. Christ. Ever occur to you that the guy was very methodical and knew what he wanted to do? And most of your assumptions seem to be things mentioned in tabloids.
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
And I need to ask the NRA:
WHERE IS THE GODDAMN REGULATION?
The Swiss and the Canadians both have a higher per capita gun count than the United States. And yet their incidents of gun-related homicides are significantly lower. Canadian guns are almost exclusively the hunting kind. You don’t get them easily, handguns even less so.
The Swiss have it even better. After two years of compulsory military training, you TAKE YOUR ISSUED GUN HOME. In all these years they have had just the one incident, where a guy having issues with the transport system killed a few politicians, I think. But two years of hard training on how to use a gun, when to use a gun and most importantly when NOT TO use a gun. (just noticed Prasenjeet covered this, but I think I’ve added a bit more.)
The Aussies made it harder to get guns a few years back following a massacre and since then gun-related crimes have dropped (no do NOT believe that email that does the rounds, it cherry picks its facts). You can still own a gun but it includes a waiting period, background checks and two months’ training.
A funnier argument is that the it prevents the government from becoming tyrannical (and this is often accompanied with examples of communist China and Stalinist Russia banning guns among the populace).
If they believe that in the wacked out event that the US Govt decides to become a totalitarian regime, as if their S&W handguns are going to stop a round from the barrell of an M-1 Abrams tank.
Even more absurd is the argument that “If everyone had guns someone would have ended it earlier”
Yeah right.
You’re in a hallway and you hear a gunshots. You see one student with a gun, two lying dead on the floor. You have half a second to make a decision:
Which one of the three is the killer? Do you shoot the guy who is standing and kill the saviour, or assume he is the saviour and get killed?
@Anonymouse:
The “Glock” is not a single type of handgun, but a company that makes various models, both automatic (few) and semi-automatic (many). Just like “MiG” is an aircraft manufacturing company and not a fighter jet 🙂 But you’re right, the Glock is a favourite with the Indian special forces, saw it with the IAF commandos, the Garuds. But those too I believe are semi-autos, the AK-47 at their hip was probably enough for automatic fire 🙂
@Aditya
Thanks for pointing that out. The news reports talked about a Glock 9mm. I dont know much about guns, but I know that the Glock 17 and Glock 19 are 9mm semi-atuomatic pistols. And I also knew that the Glock 19 is the weapon of choice for the SPG and MARCOS. Didnt think it was a big deal, just saying that these weapons are a bit exclusive in our country even with law enforcement.
Sometimes in this world a girl just can’t show off her knowledge of guns without being corrected, sigh …. 🙂
@ Aditya
“…Which one of the three is the killer? Do you shoot the guy who is standing and kill the saviour, or assume he is the saviour and get killed?”
Very well put. Couldn’t agree with you more.
Suzi,
Should we take the guns away from the cops? That would prevent any kind of confusion.
Yourfan writes:
@GB:I have not gone through all the comments. But there are some who have tried to understand both side of this tragedy and I want myself to belong to that group. This tragedy has brought in immense loss of innocent lives along with their unfulfilled dreams, loss of innocence, but glory to mistrust, glory to hatred and it has highlighted the consequences of loosing compassion for people around us who somehow ‘cant be us’. In my humble opinion no one-sided judgment – be it that of condemnation of the dastardly act or empathy for the perpetrator is good for us as individuals or as a society as we don’t know whether I will be the next victim – that is the victim whose dreams are going to be forcefully snatched away by a person or the victim who will be forced by the society to never have the opportunity to dream.
Exactly. These is what NRA and the fools who support it don’t understand. If Cho was living in a world of paranoia and delusion, these NRA fools are no better. I had a huge discussion on this on one forum, consisting primarily of Americans, and the reasons they put forth for gun ownership and their right to bear weapons range from moronic to outright ridiculous.
Check some of the reasons on my post on the Gun issue.
At the same time, I don’t feel revulsion for this guy. The reason being he was sick. He was mentally unstable. “Sanki” to use a popular hindi term. A mentally unstable person could do anything and thats how he was diagonised, a pity that he wasn’t in a mental institution where he should have been. It wasn’t of course his fault that he wasn’t there. A mentally ill person doesn’t know he is mentally ill. It is for others to diagonise him and make sure he is being treated.
@Abhishek: Neither do I.
@Naveen: Thank you.
@Vivek Kumar: In India, campus violence does not have such a kill rate. Noone can prevent people from being violent: abolishing guns is hardly about that.
@Vishak: Blaming “society” is the most convenient thing to do because being so generic, it is like blaming noone at all.
@Amchi: Better policing is the solution; not in arming the population.
@Tintin: Look at the comments section and see the justification for gun-control…the “ones who want will get it anyway and so give it to everyone” logic.
@Psy-cho: Society is evil…is again a most general statement. Our shooter, while not having a trust fund or a BMW, has had a far more privileged upbringing than most people his age in the world. A far more privileged upbringing than his parents had.
@Dipanwita: Driven to his breaking point? How? By people spending money? Look here…each one of us see the Hiltons and the Hurleys and the ABs and other privileged people leading a life of luxury…are we being driven to our breaking point?
@Kailas: Ok.
@Gaurav: Of course. So let’s give everyone guns such that everyone can protect themselves violently. The police force can become redundant. There was a brand of politics that once advocated this: the anarchists.
@Nilu: How witty.
@Varsha:Hmm.
@Razer: Of course they are not marginal. They are as non-marginal as getting your stomach pumped full of lead. Of course. Unlike you I dont get to see NatGeo or Disc-overy and so pardon my ignorance. And oh yes the moral police actually take out processions because they believe in it.
@Anonymous: Socio-economic parameters? Sigh. Blame his parents do we? (Nurture)…
@Shan: Sure medical records should be released to the FBI database. But that does nothing for people who go postal after buying a gun..or those who get their hands on their parent’s gun cabinet.
@Prasenjeet: When did I call the card-burners clinically insane? Being jealous of others and trying to prevent them from enjoying what you cannot is not a sign of being “clinically insane”, it is a most natural instinct. When you are clinically insane, you have no qualms in taking lives because of that instinct. Shooting sprees may occur in other countries, but I am sure you will agree or perhaps not that the shootings in US far outnumber them. I am not talking about just random acts of violence but armed robbery, armed break-in. Here even the people who steal car radios are armed.
@Ashish: It is illegal in India to get a gun. Those who get a gun know that. In US it is legal. Decent people who want to hunt get guns. A few of those decent people get laid off or feel slighted. They take that gun and shoot down people in their path.
@WW: Hmm.
@Shashikant: True.
@Raj: You provide guns in Walmarts and you line up one more hole.
@Shek: “People who really wanted to go ‘postal’ would find a gun illegally anyway.”
And so we make it easier for them.
@Sriram: Eli Roth is the guy I believe whose brainchild “Hostel’ is.
@Indiamusing: The thing is that the Nithari killers were not allowed to air their manifesto if they had one on TV. Reporting crime is okay, providing a platform for sickos is not.
@Puneet: Huh?
@Pighooey:
“So lots of people are bullied in school. A thick accent, glasses, physical deformities…kids can be cruel and insensitive. Most people who go through that, however, do not end up being killers.
There is no excuse for Cho. What motivated him to kill has motivated others to excel. It is all a question of how one reacts to one’s experiences. ”
Agree.
@Biju: Hmm.
@Saty: As Chris Rock said if you make the bullets prohibitively expensive, there will be no “innocent bystanders”.
@Gaurav:
“Wrong ! The philosophy is to be prepared to defend yourself, you can not rely on others to defend you.”
Right ! Abolish the police force.
@Suzi: When you are giving common citizens the right to own assault rifles, no matter how much background checks you do, it is going to get into the hands of a few wrong people. The fact that they have the assault rifles already is going to be an enabler for some of their actions.
@Suyog: Hm.
@JR: The fact that evil people will find a way around is no reason for dropping the instruments of death in their lap.
@Anonymous: Prozac?
@Mukul:
Whoa !
“One could have said that he butchered the students because of the trauma and humiliation faced at the institution. But he opened fire and killed people randomly instead of punishing selected few. So, his is the case of a deranged, frustrated chump.”
Dude. What logic is that? Noone needs to be “punished” here…it is NOT Paris Hilton’s fault that she is rich. Saying that this would have been great if some “rich kids” has been killed is quite perverse.
@Sriram: This is a tabloid. Didnt you know?
@Aditya: “If they believe that in the wacked out event that the US Govt decides to become a totalitarian regime, as if their S&W handguns are going to stop a round from the barrell of an M-1 Abrams tank.”
Exactly.
@Yourfan: I disagree that Hui had no chance to dream. He was enrolled in VT, a good school, and provided privileges that people in most regions of the world would die for. Noone owes Hui a Mercedes or a hot chick or a invitation to a frat party….the fact that he was mediocre was noone’s fault. His parents who worked in a laundry shop were far less privileged then he is, and they didn’t have to kill. They still moved up in society at least to the point hat they could send their son to VT to get an education they never had. I am sorry I have no sympathy for Hui. I have plenty for his parents.
@Oi: What you said about Hui holds true only if he is classified (something that wont happen as he is dead) as criminally insane i.e. a person who is not aware of the consequences of the right/wrongness of his actions. Many mass murderers please for criminally insane status but they don’t get it because mass killing does not necessarily make you “criminally insane” I would think that Hui’s manifesto showed intent and logic behind his action and it would have been unlikely he would have gotten the “criminally insane” tag had he lived.
“A mental defect or disease that makes it impossible for a person to understand the wrongfulness of his acts or, even if he understands them, to ditinguish right from wrong. Defendants who are criminally insane cannot be convicted of a crime, since criminal conduct involves the conscious intent to do wrong — a choice that the criminally insane cannot meaningfully make.” [Source]
It is doubtful if Hui had lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong (he makes the point in his rant that the rich kids are responsible for what is going to happen…the fact that what he is doing is wrong is evident to him…except that he is transferring the responsibility to someone else)
Well, the comparison (between Cho and fundamentalists in India) is only true to the extent both parties criticize what others cannot do. The Sena hooligans censor what lovers cannot do, and Cho obviously wanted to censor those he didn’t like – considering ‘assassination is an extreme form of censorship’.
Both parties fail at one level – the mentality of ‘protest’. While dissent is good in civil society to some extent, when that is the only option one pursues, that choice reflects a negative energy within. Instead of thinking what others cannot do one should think what one can do.
In today’s choice obsessiveness, even the Sena hooligans can assert their choice – but in a positive way. For example, one can set up cheap and accessible yoga centres near Madhya Pradesh schools. Private business. End of story. The upstarts can worship US sitcoms, the left intellectuals can worship China’s chairman. To each his own. All depends on the supply side. Meanwhile, remain positive.
Well armed governments killed a lot more people than lunatics like Cho ever did. One of the deterants against a despotic government is a well armed citizenry. In any case, crooks are able to get handguns and worse even in countries where such weapons are tightly controlled, like in India.
How is an attack on the Bombay subway different from the VTech massacre ? Several crazy people did in Bombay what one lunatic did in VTech. Its not like banning the ownership of RDX/ammonium nitrate stopped the massacre from happening.
you are right about the moralist farts , but you need to ask yourself why you consider yourself incapable of protecting yourself. I guess you’re socially liberal but mentally retarded when it comes to individual rights. You are probably a marxist too….give me gun toting conservatives anyday, you marxist lenin lickers are pathetic.
Yes you are right, gun control is the solution. Look at India , what a peaceful country right (women are raped regularly, pregnant women were cut open in gujarat and killed, an innocent mad girl was raped on a mumbai train, kids are killed just because of their caste, religion etc , when goondas threaten people businessmen are forced to give their hard earned money over, people need mutliple locks on their door to keep away thieves ..the list is endless) and given the excellence of the indian police we all can sleep in peace can’t we ? what do u say fucktard ? I say give everyone a glock so they can defend themselves. If you believe the indian government and police is going to protect you , keep dreaming.
@ sid:
so what do u suggest sid?
arming everyone with Kalashnikovs?
Militias or vigilantes are never a solution to law and order issues.
Gun control is a part of the problem. And a part of the solution.
On a side note:
It saddens me to see that this pervert is getting all the attention in the world; getting everything he craved and wanted. The focus should be on the students that lost their lives and those who are surviving. This is not to say that he should not discussed at all, but I am worried about the backlash that this is going to bring from like-minded students in the United States–there are still people who idolize the shooters of Columbine, and I hope that there isn’t another rampage like this one…
@ sid
and speaking of “marxist lenin lickers”….as you called them
look at any marxist leninist or any other pinko-nist system and you will see the maximum presence of extra-judicial vigilantes and “people’s” militias in those societies.
I’m glad you pointed out how irresponsible NBC’s act was. I read in the papers, how they kept saying they felt it was necessary to show the videos in order to understand why this incident had happened. And all the time at the back of my head, I was thinking, these bastards are showing it to push up TRP’s. This is their Exclusive Scoop and they don’t give a damn that there will be misguided, deluded pricks who will hereafter defend this guy and what he did.
Thank you for writing this; it hurt too much to write, so I didn’t. But umm, thanks.
I agree with you about the gun control issues.
Also, go ask Charlton Heston this – if it’s your democratic right to buy guns, why isn’t it my right to buy marijuana? Ever heard of anybody dying from a marijuana injury?
But you know, morons everywhere find ways to make the world a crappy place. India, America, Japan – you name it, the morons are there.
J.A.P.
Hmmm. I thought more like profound. But witty works too.
I personally feel it is the ease with which a gun can be bought that is part of the problem. Regarding the mental stability of Cho, I wouldn’t agree with you, GB, where you respond in your comments to Oi. Wasn’t Cho taken to a psychiatric hospital in 05? I mean, the mere fact that he chose to set things right by going on a killing spree, shows how far he was from a reality–even if he sounded logical by his statements, at the least he was delusional.
I think instead of blanket ban on owning Guns, Educational institutions can prohibit having guns inside their campus! After all, the campus is a private property!
@Anonymouse:
*in best Daankayh (from Shrek) voice*
You’re a girl blogger? I mean, of course you’re a girl blogger! You just reek of feminine beauty (and gunpowder)!
(and one who knows her guns… pardon me, while I wipe the drool off me face…)
@Naiverealist:
Not sure if the Shiv Sena has the same aims of ‘censorship’. The facade, of course, is there, but it exists only as the best way to get noticed.
@sudeep:
The terrorist attack on the Mumbai locals was different in its calculated intention to paralyze a financial hub. Unlike Cho who was basically a loon with guns, who killed all the WRONG people as opposed to those he accused – he killed the not-so-rich immigrant students (at least an Indian and Indonesian), three faculty members among others.
You also say that “Its not like banning the ownership of RDX/ammonium nitrate stopped the massacre from happening.”
Now that it completely wrong – have you realized just HOW many times RDX smugglers have been nabbed with their hauls? What Bombay faced was nothing compared to what could have been if RDX was available at every paanwallah. Well, as long as any paanwallahs were left alive by the end of the week.
@sid:
“I say give everyone a glock so they can defend themselves. If you believe the indian government and police is going to protect you , keep dreaming.”
That is just what I want to see – two cars colliding in the middle of Andheri station’s SV Road intersection followed by a shootout between the two drivers, three pedestrians and four taxiwallas.
The problem here is that the MISUSE of firearms has to be punished heavily by the law enforcement. If you cant have faith in the police without guns available easily, how can you have it in your scenario? In your case, people will not only misuse guns, but get away with it AND do it again.
You see, I travel by train every day. The last thing I want to know is that the ninety nine other people squeezed into my compartment have guns. I’ve seen fistfights over being pushed out of trains and such.
@J.A.P.
Amen.
@Naren:
Are you being sarcastic? If not, well, VTech and many other colleges in the US *do* have a blanket ban on guns.
@all:
Realize that gun ownership or lack thereof is part of the native culture. And this is not just for the United States as a country, but for each state there too. What works for texas may or may not work for Virginia, and vice versa.
read the story….
http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/arms/india/sheep/
http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/arms/
I think if i had a gun …my neighbours would not have been able to waste my precious time. Gun saves lot of headache from scheming people surrounding you. Nobody takes panga coz u are physically weak or misunderstood…though i dont support gun for everyone…but i need a gun….
@sunny:
who decides?
The point everyone is missing is, why he did it?? And what we can learn from this tragedy?
How about teaching your kids to teach everyone with respect? How about teaching your kids not to bully weaker kids? How about teaching your kids not to pick on kids who are not like them? Your kids have to know, that they are not great just becuase their parents are Bengali.
Some little bastards can push other kids to edge, this can leave kids scarred for whole life and result can be, what happened at Virginia tech.
GreatBong,
What I find interesting here is this ad that came up with your blog post.
Pentagon Gun Safes
http://www.pentagonsafes.com 100% Made In USA -Factory-Direct– No Middleman – Home Delivery
This ad, that Google ads put on your site as a part of the adsense ads. Itis ironical that a post which essentially is against this very thing has an ad which could have made it much easier for this guy to get a gun.
The point is, that here, everything is run by commercialism, and money.So-called promised freedom of people is just a subtle way of covering it all up.
Also, I don’t understand why people should be allowed to keep guns without training or authorization.Firstly, the law enforcement system that is so strong here , you call 911 and cops arrive in no time,whats the need? And if there is a need, let it be warranted. For a country that fusses so much about 9/11 and security, when they look at every F-1 student as a potential terrorist , I am sure they can have some strong laws
@The terrorist attack on the Mumbai locals was different in its calculated intention to paralyze a financial hub. Unlike Cho who was basically a loon with guns, who killed all the WRONG people as opposed to those he accused – he killed the not-so-rich immigrant students (at least an Indian and Indonesian), three faculty members among others.
Chos actions involved a lot of planning too, like creating suicide videos, procuring guns over a period of months, knowing the plans of the building he wanted to attack etc. Perhaps even stalking his victims.
@Now that it completely wrong – have you realized just HOW many times RDX smugglers have been nabbed with their hauls? What Bombay faced was nothing compared to what could have been if RDX was available at every paanwallah. Well, as long as any paanwallahs were left alive by the end of the week.
I wasnt arguing for making RDX available at your neighborhood paanwala. The point is that just because you ban guns/rdx, gun injuries/rdx injuries wont go away. People will use their evil genius to commit murder using a different tool, their bare hands, if you deny them one tool. The only crimes that banning guns *may* reduce are crimes of passion, where in a state of fraught emotions, you pick up a gun and kill someone. There are atleast some safeguards against this sort of a thing, for e.g. there is a 3 day waiting period in many states to get a gun you buy in many states – so a person can cool down a bit, there are background checks, and limits on the kind of weapons one can buy.
Very interesting article and the comments that follow. Its a deep debate really- this gun control thing. In one hand people may say that they are entitled to have one. Just like say a country like Iran may say that we are entitled to nukes just like US is.
Does gun control actually empower the degenerates and criminals as they would have guns even when they are not legally available? And how does every citizen having a gun really help in self defense and crime reduction? Maybe someone who has done studies on these aspects can elucidate.
Its a strange country, USA. You can buy a gun legally, but not cocaine or marijuana. Even getting drugs without prescriptions is so damn hard. But in a country where the police force is more efficient than in many many other countries, the right of citizens to possess guns is really questionable. If you live in a lawless place like that ghetto in that great movie “City of God”, then you just have to have a gun to survive.
Also, how efficient would be an amateur gunman be in front of a killer? Would he fiddle his pockets, take out his cellphone, his keys. his wallet and then the gun and still have time to defend himself?
In this case, even though they deny it, Vtech was to be blamed for taking the first set of shootings lightly. A big alarm could have helped to reduce causalities. But I agree with their statement that its not possible to shut down the campus in a flash. Its just not possible.
I don’t want to discuss the psychology of the boy or analyze what lead him to reach the break over threshold. Its not that the society ostracized him. I read in yesterday’s nytimes that his English major classmates definitely made an effort of socialize with him. But it was he who was obstinate. I don’t quite agree with the ‘ he couldn’t get what he coveted hypothesis’. You cant help if someone deliberately builds an impenetrable wall around themselves. Many people said ‘Hi’ to him in his dorm and wanted to socialize with him, but got snubbed. But he said something like Jesus Christ. Ill make it a point to relate this to the next proselytizing bastard.
@Sid- I don’t agree with you rationale but I absolutely understand with your sentiments.
@Shan- “Now the problem is that whether in school or college, any boy/girl who shows some creativity of the dark (noir-ish) type in literature or poetry or painting will be looked upon with suspicion and possibly reported to authorities as a potential danger to society…
Now that’s sad.” I like that Shan. Very well said.
@Sriram- “Sahn writes
I am not just talking about “macabre†plays etc. That’s bullshit. By that standard Quentin Tarantino should be a mass murderer.
Precisely what I have been thinking. Anyone who saw Reservoir Dogs will vouch for that. His latest production Hostel is really gory.”
I think you completely misunderstood Shan. And Reservoir Dogs is just an absolutely amazing movie. Why blame Quentin? I find it strange that people blame Tarantino for violence. Also Hostel is not a Tarantino movie. What about Scorcese? De Palma? And the endless slasher movies. Have you seen “Cannibal Holocaust”? The violence in Reservoir Dogs is dark humor at its very best. Consider the scene where Tim Roth is lying in a pool of blood in the car. He says hes gonna die. Keitel: “Do you have a degree in medicine”? Now thats dark humour at its very best. Plus violence should be judged in the context of the movie. You dont expect a lot of bear hugs, kisses and sensuous bed scenes in a heist movie like the Dogs. So why debase Quentin? True he rips off a lot, but so does De Palma. How many people can write a script like Pulp or Dogs? You feel repulsed by the ear cutting scene? That guy was dancing to K Billy’s super sound of the 70’s tune before doing that. Now tell me honestly, just how many directors can do that?
And the opening scene is just breathtakingly beautiful.
A question for the people who feel that if guns are outlawed the killers will find another tool: When was the last time a man yielding a knife/sword/chainsaw/bow & arrows killed 32 people inside a crowded university campus before being killed or overpowered?
For heaven’s sake, get real. This would not have happened if the gun wasn’t available.
The Indian blogosphere is so full of shit Arnab, with you being the shining exception.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070422/asp/frontpage/story_7680588.asp
Good post GB.
Marriage of the gun laws, which reflect off the high-energy, competitive and performance-oriented attitude of US society that makes the country so prosperous and successful (and in equal measure stressful, demanding and unsympathetic to failures), to an unstable mind engenders great misery.
As usual, your opinions mirror mine to a T, only more eloquently. Well said!
You can’t do much to stop a madman from getting his hands on a gun. Yes gun laws need to be stricter. But that won’t fix the problem altogether. Let’s call a spade a spade here. I say what about these moronic privacy laws that prevent information sharing between colleges, doctors, family members, law enforcement and the individual. Yes, you need privacy laws to a certain extent. But those same privacy laws should not get in the way of protecting the public. They need to done away with. What happened to the greater good? Forget the gun lobby, worry about the lobby of these mental and health experts, who worry being out of a job if the privacy laws are liberalized.
As an aside, I am sick of the big-4 networks in the US: NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS and their cousins the cable channels. Haven’t you heard this before? “We are taking extreme precaution in releasing these videos and pictures. We struggled to decide whether to release the footage.” Total BS.
@When was the last time a man yielding a knife/sword/chainsaw/bow & arrows killed 32 people inside a crowded university campus before being killed or overpowered? For heaven’s sake, get real.
The point is that a gun, or some other tool, would have been procured illegally if guns were declared to be illegal. (Just like in India, people manage to procure AK47s and such even while they are illegal)
@Sudeep: I think I need to make myself clearer. There’s a difference between CRIMINALS and MADMEN. This Cho guy was a madman, not a criminal. While criminals have all the proper contacts and can procure guns illegally, madmen are frustrated common people without contacts. They cannot get guns if they are not freely available. The most Cho would have done without a gun is to stab a couple of people, and maybe himself.
@Aditya
Yes!
Those who want to get & use guns will do so regardless of at what level the ban is!
@Joy Forever
The last time I know, some madmen killed many innocent people hoping they’ll go to heaven & play with 72 virgins!
Just to clear things up, I am great fan of Quentin Tarantino and have a complete collection of his movies in DVD. And have never felt repulsed by his movies. Hostel included.
Does anybody remember that *rib-tickling* picture that showed a young man from a *country-not-too-far-away* posing with a couple of AK47-or-97-or-whatever?
I did not find it hilarious then and lots of people upbraided me for the absence of a funny bone in my anatomy.
Yes, what are those pillars-of-merriment saying now?
Are they still visiting this blog?
@Naren: Ok, if you are talking about Islamic terrorists, they are not madmen in the literal sense of the term… I mean they are (usually) clinically sane people. They have a fixed target and a very well organised network behind them who train them, supply them with guns/bombs and send them on a mission, promising them those 72 virgins. In the eyes of the law they are criminals, though their ideology and their actions may not seem sane to us.
But my original question was, suppose a person like me (assume I’m not a criminal) gets mad at the rich American guys with the hot girlfriends and decides to do something about it. What does he do if he can’t buy a gun easily? How can he kill 32 people at one go? Remember, he’s not a cold blooded murderer who plans things systematically… he is doing this impulsively.
@Aditya
Not sure what you were trying to say, but no, I am not a blogger, you got that wrong!
@Mouse:
(just kidding…. 🙂 )
He was diagonised with serious depression and was given drugs Prozac….In the clinical trials, it was found that the drugs like Prozac has serious side effect on kids. It make them more aggressive and violent. Depression like mental desease is due to chemical imbalance in the brain. We can keep on finding the external cause which triggered that aggression but it will be impossible to control that aggression by just controlling the external stress. He was sick and that sickness took his and others life.
All those people trying to psychoanalyze this issue are fools. The problem is the availability of guns. There are far more dangerous and disillusioned characters in India. There are slums where people live in absolute filth for god’s sake! Why don’t these people go on killing sprees? Because guns are not easily available. So even if they did go for a killing spree, there won’t be this much of a death toll.
@Rakesh: Those people trying to psychoanalyze this issue are not fools. By controlling the gun, we can definately prevent mass killing but by psychoanalysing the situation, we can attempt to solve the root cause of the problem. If that person was not having easy acess to the guns, he would have killed atleast few people or himself. I hope you want to prevent the killing itself, not just the mass killing. You are right, that there are mental patient in India too and they kill themself. We do not hear about them since they don’t have acess to guns and do not get involved in the mass killing. But by proper treatment and therapy, those people can be cured.
The blame rests on the shoulders of that mumbling retard an nobody else. What enabled him and made it possible for him to hang around long enough at this school to plan this massacre is the liberal ideology on our college campus’s where minorities get a lifetime free pass.
Something tells me that if Cho Seung Dipshit’s name was Keven Smith, the two police reports of stalking female students, frightening mental evaluation, his graphic and violent “plays” and the warnings of two faculty members would have been WAY more than enough to get him booted off campus. However, because of his minority status and the oh so precios liberals commitment to understanding, embracing and celebrating “diverse cultures” that we might “not necessarily understand” this lunatic gets a free pass (lets not forget the only faculty members who warned their superiors about this kid, were themselves, Asian American). Nobody wants to call a spade a spade or a lunatic asian a lunatic asian because they would lose their job!!! You unsensitive hate monger!!! You… you… REPUBLICAN!!!
Lord knows it is not up to us, however, like your grandfather said Cho, I hope you burn in hell.
Very well written – I share the same views – http://amitabhjotwani.com/2007/04/16/virginia-tech-massacre-who-is-to-be-blamed/