Apr 18 2007
Somebody Has To: UPDATED AGAIN
Since nobody else is asking, I guess I’ll risk being seen as insensitive about the Virginia Tech massacre. I have to wonder: Has anybody stepped back from this for just a moment and realized how unlikely–and frightening–this is?
I have seen this compared to Nickel Mines, Charles Whitman, and Columbine. Sorry, but this shooting is not comparable to any of the three.
The murders at Nickel Mines aren’t comparable because of the nature of the targets: Young Amish children who the murderer knew would comply and wouldn’t fight back. We’re retiring this comparison right now–except for one point of similarity I’ll get to in a minute.
Charles Whitman was armed with an M1 Carbine, a shotgun, two Remington rifles, and three pistols.
The Columbine murderers were armed with a 12 gauge Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun, a Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9 mm semi-automatic rifle with thirteen 10-round magazines, and a 9 mm Intratec Tec-9 Semi-automatic handgun with 32-round magazines.
The Virginia Tech murderer was armed with nothing but two 9mm semi-automatic pistols, a Glock 19 and a Walther P-22. The Glock magazine holds 15 rounds, and the Walther, 10 rounds.
Charles Whitman took the elevator to the top of the bell tower and picked off his victims below.
The Columbine murderers walked into the school and started shooting indiscriminately into rooms full of people.
Cho first murdered people in a residence hall–and then two hours later, walked into a classroom building, chained the doors, and started shooting people there.
The question I can’t escape is how did he manage to murder over thirty people? He only had two pistols, both semi-automatics, and both with limited magazine capacities. We can assume that he was comparatively small, given that he was Korean and surrounded by kids from Virginia. Yet with only two semi-automatic pistols, both with limited capacities, he not only managed to murder over thirty people, but like the Amish children at Nickel Mines, they lined up and let him shoot them.
How is this possible? How can a bunch of Virginia kids just stand there and let somebody shoot them? Given that he had to drop the magazine and reload at some point, why did nobody rush him or try to stop him? How is it that only one person acted with an ounce of courage?
Had this happened in California, I probably wouldn’t be surprised. But this happened in Virginia. How did a building full of Virginia kids fail to find the cojones to stop this SOB?
I know it sounds insensitive, but I find this more frightening than the shooting itself.
UPDATE I: Jules Crittenden has a roundup here.
UPDATE II: Mark Steyn has similar questions.
22 responses so far
22 Responses to “Somebody Has To: UPDATED AGAIN”
1) He didn’t grow up in South Korea, from the accounts I’ve seen he was at least six foot tall, and thus wasn’t an example of the stereotypical Asian build, physically speaking.
2)He apparently had tons of ammo.
3)He deliberately locked down the building, chaining the entrance. This was deliberate & planned.
4)The professors in each classroom were killed. It sounds to me like he deliberately butchered the authority figures in each room, thus seizing control of the vicinity & removing the most likely leaders of any counter-rush.
5)The professors apparently kept the students in each room while he was slaughtering the neighboring rooms, adhering to the university’s lockdown procedures. This played into his apparent invulnerability, as no good samaritans emerged from the other rooms to flank him from behind while he faced down each roomful in turn.
6) It sounds as if he repeatedly shot through closed, barricaded doors, gunning down those who tried to keep him out of the rooms. He must have known that an average classroom door isn’t going to stop 9mm gunfire at close range, likewise, those holding the doors closed with their bodies did not.
7) Pistols are better for close-in control of tight quarters than long-guns. We had a sniper rampage on campus a while back - the HUB Lawn killings in 1996. She used a number of semiautomatic rifles, but attacked from a prone position hidden in some bushes, and was easily subdued once someone figured out where she was & tackled her.
Even given all of the above, I still don’t quite understand how this happened. At first I suspected that there was something about Norris Hall’s physical layout which might have allowed him to stand in the entranceways to each room & face off the students in each room without any way to rush him from the side, but the schematics available on today’s New York Times makes that look unlikely - they were separated by simple curtain-walls, no deep entranceway. It seems as if the only thing keeping the rest of the building off of his back & sides was his own ability to intimidate his victims.
Well, I was “insensitive” too but regretted it later mostly because I felt that it was too soon to raise the question.
But how much ammo he had really isn’t relevant to my point. At any given time, he had a maximum of 25 rounds. Even if he had a belt full of loaded magazines, he had to drop the empty ones and reload. He didn’t have automatic weapons, and he wasn’t standing there shooting continuously–it’s not possible.
Charles Whitman was armed with a 30-caliber Remington 700 and a Leupold 4x scope, he was a trained marksman, and he was alone at the top of a bell tower picking off students like rabbits–yet he only killed half as many as this guy did, and that’s including his mother and wife. I just don’t see how this could have happened.
Whitman didn’t have his victims trapped in pens of which he controlled the main exits. (As it was, the students in Livreau’s room had to climb out the second-story windows to escape Cho.) After the first fatal encounters inside the tower & the initial fusillade from the rooftop, Whitman was under nearly constant counterfire, with what sounds like half the town returning fire. The unarmed and passers-by were able to get away under cover of distance & the distraction of the return fire. Many of his later victims were armed citizens and policemen who were trying to fight back, and thus were exposing themselves to the sniper.
i totally agree with you. i wonder too why i keep hearing the students say things like, ‘we’re just kids…’ these ‘kids’ are old enough to go to war, but somehow they are still waiting around for someone to tell them what to do. i’m sick of how ‘enraged’ some students are that the campus [a small city, thank you] wasn’t locked down. someone had to tell them not to go to class before they would decide not to go to class - even though many of them had a bad feeling about it. that’s my idea of a nanny state.
it’s a real shame that on a campus with such a military tradition, no one took this guy out. this experience is as strong an argument as i can think of why we SHOULD allow guns on campuses.
in addition, given the information i’ve read from Drudge, the shooter was clearly mentally ill and had been demonstrating obviously antisocial behavior on campus for some years. perhaps universities should use this as an opportunity to review how they deal with lunatic students. if we want safer campuses, maybe we should practice more dismissal and less tolerance.
I just read Steyn’s piece and reached yours after. You’re both quite right - the American backbone has been softening for the last 40 years. It is not a coincidence that this has happened as accessibility to higher education has expanded and those institutions have tilted strongly leftward, almost as if it’s trying to go west to get to Europe the hard way.
This weakening of will should be truly terrifying - we’ll have to see whether it will be.
An addendum and apologies for two posts.
I am also baffled every time I hear commencement speeches at the secondary and post-secondary levels, or read admissions essays, that take the attitude that, “we’re about to enter the real world…”
I always make a point to ask them what the #$%^ they’ve been doing for the last x years if only now they’re coming into “the real world.” It is an embarrassing attitude and one I try to squelch (and as quickly try to foster one of relevance and strength) whenever I encounter it.
…nothing but two 9mm semi-automatic pistols, a Glock 19 and a Walther P-22…
OK, I confess to total and utter ignorance on all things regarding firearms, but that sounds fairly frightening to me.
I wondered the same thing. Like weaver I can’t understand why 18 - 24 year old men and women call themselves kids. When I was their age I would have bitch slapped the punk who called me a “kid”.
The above being said, I don’t mean to blame the VT students for this tragedy but I think the primary question of this post should be addressed.
Why wasn’t this madman’s mental illness documented? If it had he would not have passed the background check and couldn’t have purchased the pistols. Perhaps by being sensitive to this freeks privacy we let a dangerous crack pot the freedom he needed to carry out his sick agenda.
Also, nothing for nothing, gun free zones like college campuses don’t seem to work all that well.
Okay, I’ll give a snarky response…
How can a bunch of Virginia kids just stand there and let somebody shoot them?
I guess the same way we passively submitted to the state disarming us to begin with. Hey, it was a gun-free zone. The Virginia legislature voted down legislation that would have allowed those with CCL to carry on campus only back in January.
But less snarkily, I don’t know that there were NOT kids that tried to rush the guy and simply got killed in the process. Until all the testimony comes out, how will we know?
When I was teaching I always had an off-duty cop, marine, or at least a former gang member or two in the classroom and I’m sure they would have responded to a violent confrontation with something other than total submission. I think it is probably natural that those never exposed to violence don’t respond effectively to it when confronted with it.
Rightwing,
Shame on you for insinuating that Virgina kids should of been braver than California kids.
First of all, Virginia is a lot more “middle class” than California, and I wager the kids are a lot more “sheltered”.
In Oregon (much like California), Kip Kinkle was tackled by classmates, when he went on a shooting spree.
Other than that “prejudice”, you do have a point. I can understand the first classroom being taken by surprise, but it seems like the next few classrooms should of reacted.
He could of only shot one weapon at a time, reloading it while holding the other loaded gun. The reports do say he would go into a classroom, shoot… then leave for a few seconds.
I am also not totally convinced about the lining the students up thing. Initial reports had this, but I can’t find specific stories documenting it. It doesn’t sound plausible.
Rory
Disclaimer: I am from California and use to consider myself fairly liberal.
I was just thinking the same thing! And I wondered how many killings there would have been had someone been a legal/permit-carrying gun holder? I’m betting a lot less.
I like how people try to spin it to say there should be stricter gun control laws, when the high death count WAS a result of no one having adequate defense. Only the criminal.
I know…I know, he got them at a gun store. But if he hadn’t been allowed to get them there, he would have went someplace less-than-legal.
Professor,
Koreans being short I think is an old stereotype. I’ll give one example, based on my being a golf fan, look at the heights of the ladies on this website(Seoulsisters.com). Most of the Korean women fall between 5′4 and 5′7. That isn’t short.
The Glock 19 is the 9mm compact for carry. I have the full-size equivalent, a Glock 17 (the 19 is too small for my hand). The news reported a Walther P-22 then said it was a 9mm, and a P-22 is a .22 caliber pistol, so either they meant a P-99, or he had one 9mm and one .22 caliber pistol.
Yes, they’re both dangerous–they’re supposed to be dangerous. I’m not saying they aren’t. And even at close quarters, unless he was an experienced marksman (and there’s nothing to indicate that), there is no way that every bullet he fired killed somebody. Handguns aren’t highly accurate in the first place, for somebody without a lot of experience there’s the recoil from the 9mm, and no matter what caliber, there’s the fact that he had limited ammo capacity and had to reload, at least once given the numbers, and I’d bet two or three times. He could have safely been rushed at any time he was reloading.
Did he? I just logged in so I haven’t read any of today’s stories, but he filed off the serial numbers, which doesn’t indicate that the bought the firearms legally.
Actually the fact that he had prior mental health issues, and he bought the guns legally will bolster the gun control advocates.
It may at first, but that will soon die. There’s an inherent contradiction between two issues: the privacy of the mentally disturbed and gun control, because to tighten restrictions, you have to track the mentally ill. Most Democrats learned their lesson about gun control in 2000, I think.
Anyway, how can any rational human being think that more gun control would have prevented this, when disarming the campus made them all helpless victims?
One article quoted the gun store owner where he bought them…I think it was on MSN somewhere. I chalk up the contradicting behaviors to mental illness, schizophrenia to be more specific. The way he talked in circles (his writings and video tapes) and didn’t make sense, the paranoia, delusions of persecution and all that. Schizophrenia. In the end he was a mission oriented mass murderer.
I don’t think he was copying Columbine, I think he felt he understood why those shooters did what they did, and that he was in a similar situation. But one didn’t cause the other.
[…] I wasn’t going to address the gun control ramifications of the massacre–there are plenty of bloggers doing that. Then, Rory said this in a comment: Actually the fact that he had prior mental health issues, and he bought the guns legally will bolster the gun control advocates. […]
I am probably mixed on gun control. I do believe in regulation (”well regulated militia”), but I think it should be along the lines of getting a Drivers License… basic safety course, pass a test, background check, then you get a license.
I do not believe in banning certain weapons, the constitution affords the right to bear arms, not the right to bear “hunting weapons”. I do think that if more people were able to have concealed weapons, stuff like this might be avoided, I just want to make sure that the people who do, receive the proper training.
I suppose my opinion will be unpopular, but I am also a realist and populist. If it passes the supreme court and is implimented by elected officials then fine… if not, then I ain’t going to cry.
Gun control is not a make or break issue with me, its societies values that need fixing… the English don’t have any handguns, and they have some serious issues with hooligans, violence, etc… they just use boots, bats, and their hands instead.
Rory
p.s. I think the real lesson out of this incidence, is what we do about obviously troubled kids… its the mental health system that needs work.
Not to be pedantic, but when it was written, “well regulated” meant “well equipped.” And most states require the things you listed above. However, the sole issue wasn’t self-defense from thugs and criminals at the time the Constitution was written, nor is it now. The primary point was defense against the state–as in the government–then, and now.
And gun crime in the UK has been rising since the gun ban.
I am not a expert on the 2nd amendment so I will bow to your point.
I am not surprised about the UK stats… England is a nasty place and the kids there are out of control.
The wife of my kids is english, and I have told her under nouncertain terms that the kids will never be raised in England.