So tragic. I'm watching it on CNN now. I've stayed on this campus--I was just telling my DH a few days ago how beautiful the campus was; the buildings are so majestic and steeped in history and tradition. It felt so safe and tranquil there--we slept with the windows open. Unbelievable what they've gone through in the past few months. Unthinkable that this could happen in such a beautiful city. Tragic that these fine young minds, just getting their start in life, are cut down before they ever really live.

I almost wish there weren't such thorough news coverage on this stuff. The shooting at CNN Center a few days ago started a new rash of shootings across the country. I hope this doesn't create more copycats.

My prayers go out to the families affected by this.

Just awful!

I hadn't heard about the CNN shooting. I don't watch the news much these days because it's so depressing, but when something like this happens, I do watch it a bit, just to commiserate. (sp?)

Sally

I've been on the campus, as well. It is a very nice facility, in a relatively quiet and comfortable community, and not a place where you might expect such an event to occur (if there is any such place where you might expect this.)

I am in shock. WTF is wrong with these people? What's the damn point? I'm praying for the families of these poor students!PJ

Does anyone know who and why?
Such a shame.

This was a shock and I would've never thought it would've happened there.

I don't know who or why, but I hope the media doesn't make a big, bad hero out of him for all the small, evil-minded rebels out there who would copy his actions to go out in a blaze of glory. They need to portray him as a small, cowardly criminal, IMHO. If he was mentally ill, that's another matter, but I think it's more likely that he just gave himself over to his anger.

This was an awful event today. It makes me angry to think that some idiot thought he had the right to kill all those innocent students.

My prayers for comfort go out to the families and friends of those students who lost their lives today. I also pray for any who were shot and are still alive for strength and healing. May God be with all of their families at this time of loss and sorrow.

Good point, Denise. We have to remember to pray for the wounded, too. I found out through a loved one's industrial accident that there can be a fate worse than death. God bless them.

Something like this is does not make since to normal people. Why or how a person can go and hurt so many people. No one in their right mind would do such a thing.
I feel very bad for everyone going through this awful tragedy nothing of good comes from something like this, it will leave many heart broken from lost loved ones, loved ones that might have life time injuries, and the mental part is the hardest to get over. There will be ones left with fear of getting out doing normal daily activity.
My prayers are with everyone in the community and hope that they heal fast.

Don't look for the reasons to become known for a while, if ever. There is, however, probably more to this, than anyone knows at present.

If you will recall, they found the UT tower shooter, had a brain tumor, that had not been diagnosed.

In this case, the two separate locations, would indicate a much more involved scenario, of course.

OMG can you imagine getting brain surgery (for a tumor) and when you came back to normal finding out you did something truly awful???? I'll pray for that person as well! PJ

There has been quite a bit of information coming out about the shooter on different news websites. His family is here legally with green cards from S. Korea. He was a very quiet student and didn't talk to anyone - just sat in the back of the room and didn't participate. He was an English major and wrote some disturbing things in his creative writing class. This adn his grades were not divulged in the reports from police or the university due to privacy laws. He used two different guns during the shooting spree - both with his fingerprints on them and the rounds matched the ones found in the victims. The authorities were concerned at one point there may have been a second shooter, but with this information, they know it is only one person who did all of this. One of the teachers tried blocking the door to protect his students and was shot in the head, but I imagine his stalling possibly saved some lives. Some of the students jumped out of a second story classroom to get away. One of the students said before he jumped out the window, he turned and saw his teacher blocking the door - same one that got shot - then he jumped into some bushes below and just ran. One girl was quoted as saying she was afraid to leave her dorm to go home with her family. She said she looked out and had to talk herself into going into the open since there were so many police officers around. What a horrible experience for these kids! I know this information is hard to read - I had a hard time reading it on the news website today along with seeing the photo of the shooter. I think the thing that has to be the most difficult is to be the parents of the young man who killed all those people. They are probably feeling responsible and are also dealing with the death of their son.

Yeah, I've been wondering about his parents, too. What they must be going through is unimaginable.

Sally

I wonder why we, as a society, do not recognize these signs in a person? Is it because we do not wish to intrude on their privacy? Because we are too wrapped up in our own lives to notice? His parents must be suffering terribly - bad enough to lose a child, but cannot imagine what it must be like under these conditions. I feel the loss of these wonderful students who were in control of their lives and working to make our world a better place. It is, indeed, a great loss for all of us. My prayers are with everyone affected by this tragedy!!!

I don't know about the laws there but in CA if someone writes disturbing stuff in class you are legally required to notify the authorities.
This law has saved lives. At my old high school (Quartz Hill HS,CA) some students were writing some stuff that alarmed a teacher. They also were saying stuff around campus that wasn't acceptable either. The students went to the staff and the staff did what they had to do. I remember the teacher saying she wanted the students to feel free to express thier feelings in class but she was more afraid of violence breaking out at school.
Sure enough, the kids had a small cache of weapons they were working on building up, and a written plan in a spiral notebook. They were prompty arrested. It was all in the local paper. One of the parents was in total denial. That parent claimed they were treating thier psycho kid too harshly. "Making a mountain out a mole hill" kind of statements. It was sad.BTW, NOBODY agreed with the parent. Privacy has it's place but let's not be stupid about it.

On December 15, 2005, two former Quartz Hill students were arrested for planning a Columbine style massacre at the school. The two youths allegedly intended to attack the school on St. Valentine's Day of 2006. News reports described them as goths and indicated that they had accumulated knives, ammunition, a gas mask and bomb-making instructions. They were charged on December 19, 2005 with conspiracy to commit murder. [1]

Tensions flared again on January 13, 2006, when a rumor that the former students who had been arrested would again attempt to attack the school using pipe-bombs. According to Principal Mark Bryant, the planned attacks were merely "rumor, upon rumor, upon rumor", as the two youths are still being held in custody. This "Friday the 13th" rumor was passed between students via internet messages and cell-phone text messages. In response to the threat, nearly 50% of the student body was absent from the campus by the time the school day had finished. In the end, the only disruption to the day was a firecracker explosion within a trash can during the school's lunch break.

That law sounds like it should be in every state. I mean, since the students and teachers were concerned about his writings and behavior - so much that they sent him to the hospital to put him under suicide watch and again to the school counselor - maybe this law would have prevented the tragedy from happening. But, as always, hind-sight is 20/20.

Councelling can be done from prison just fine. Seriously, a lot of kids act wierd at school. I'll bet it's hard to tell the fruity/hormonal from the bad seeds with a mission. PJ

NBC nightly news is going to bring forth more news on this boy. Supposedly in between the morning shootings and the afternoon, he mailed pics to NBC and a video of his ramblings and his reasoning of why this happened

This is just too scary that htey didn't do anything about this boy. There were plenty of reasons to

Here is a link that might be useful: MSNBC report

Thanks for the heads-up. I rarely watch TV and I'm lucky if I just catch the headlines these days on my homepage.

I can't believe MSNBC did that. By publishing the multimedia manifesto of Cho Seung-Hui, they're endangering the public to more like him who see that he succeeded in getting his message out. If we must give him publicity, we need to effectively portray him as ridiculous and small. When he looks like a larger-than-life monster, that feeds the young angry rebels who would want to be like him--powerful and fearsome. The media has great power, and "with great power comes great responsibility."

I don't agree with everything this guy says, but he seems to have some wise things to say about the VA Tech massacre:

http://darkadapted.blogspot.com/2007/04/sympathy-for-virginia-tech.html

be berrin, I've been thinking why these "gunmen" pick their targets..why Virginia Tech? Why Columbine? Why the Amish?
Well, the amswer was obvious after awhile!
They ARE cowards and small!
I can prove it and will.
Let's say mr "b*d-*ss" gunman guy walks into Centennial High in Compton,CA? What's going to happen when he brandishes his manly-man weapon and opens fire? Rmember these folk aren't amish,young girls or college students trying to study....
I can assure you guns float around Centennial High School and even showing up armed is taking risks. The kids can probably spot a would-be shooter and would probably shoot first. Then, if Mr "b*d-*sss" gunman actually lived-he'd wish he hadn't.
possible targets for low risk shooting rampage:
Small,mountain community high school (taken twice)
Amish girls(taken)
Day care center (darn Tim! taken)
Techie college is a good bet and it's been awhile since the last one....
Don't want to get caught in the middle of a gang war you inadvertently started so New York and LA are bad bets.
Pathetic.PJ

One of my best friends was a cop in Virginia. I asked her how she had the courage to go into such dangerous situations every day, and after she answered, she added that by the time the cops get there, it's usually all over, anyway. We can't expect the police to protect us from these madmen--they CAN'T. The VA Tech tragedy proves that. If we disarm the masses, we're all as defenseless as Amish schoolgirls, and the criminals know it.

I listen to arguments from both sides of the gun-control issue, and both sides make legitimate points. I wish I knew the answers. I just wish *somebody else* in Norris Hall would have been armed that day. I wonder what the survivors have to say about that.

Remember the Luby's shooting in Killeen? Remember the intelligent, pretty, red-headed chiropractor who hid behind a toppled table with her parents while the madman calmly shot victims, took his time reloading, and shot some more? She lost her parents that day, and went on to become a Texas Representative. Here's a clip from her story, with the link below for the whole thing.

*****

A Daughter's Regret
May 12, 2000

Suzanna Gratia Hupp will live the rest of her life with regret. Had she been carrying her gun the day a madman executed her parents while she cowered helplessly and then fled, she is convinced she could have stopped one of the worst massacres in U.S. history.

She has told the story many times over. Tomorrow she will relate it again before advocates of gun rights in a counter-rally to the Million Mom March. Put yourself in her shoes, she asks, and then think again whether gun control is the answer.

It was October 1991 when an unemployed merchant seaman drove his pickup truck into a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., leaped out and opened fire. He killed 23 people and wounded more than 20.

Hupp and her parents were having lunch in the restaurant when the shooting started. Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, but she had left it in the car. Her father tried to rush the gunman and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window, thinking her
mother was behind her.

But Hupp's mother had crawled alongside her dying husband of 47 years to cushion his head in her lap. Police later told Hupp they saw her mother look up at the gunman standing over her, then bow down before he shot her in the head.

"I'd like people to think about what happened to me, and try to place themselves in that situation," Hupp said yesterday between a string of interviews in which she relived the tragedy as Exhibit A in her argument against restrictive gun laws. "Now, instead of thinking of their parents, have it be their children.

"Even if you choose not to have a gun, as the bad guy who ignored all the laws is getting close to you and as he levels that firearm at one of your children, don't you hope the person next to you has chosen to carry a gun and knows how to use it?"

The story is powerful, and not only because the question assaults the brain and invites no easy answers. With its implied alternative of an armed Hupp gunning down the bad guy before he gets too far, the story invokes the American legend of the frontier lawman who acts alone to thwart evil.

Unable to don that mantle when it could have saved her parents, Hupp, now 40, has been trying ever since to rally people against gun control.

*****

I'm afraid I might be opening a can of worms on Garden Web, so I think this will be my last post here on this thread. It's such a sensitive topic and one so close to any parent's heart who can sympathize with the VA Tech parents. We're all searching for answers, but there are other forums which might be more appropriate for these questions I'm raising. I hope I haven't offended anyone.

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Representative Suzanna Hupp

Generally speaking, the people who behave in this manner, often have a physical malady, which has gone undiagnosed, and untreated, for too long.

Most errant behaviors, have a physical cause, they simply go undetected.

bo-berrin
I've been impressed with how most folks here express their opinions with civility. This "Conversations" page is the place to carry on with folks who share the common gardening interests.

However, from personal experience, I suggest you don't mention "C*TS". ; - )

Now, J.D., you know I HAD to do a G.W. search on that! :-)

Like you, I really appreciate the way Texas gardeners here on GW express their differing opinions with sensitivity and respect. I can learn from folks like that. Texas has such a diverse population--we've got everybody from cowboys to politicians to beauty queens to country girls--but we all seem to get along for the most part. That says a lot about us, huh?

Sure was nice meeting you the other day!

bo,
Well you've ruined your reputation now!!! It is fun to put a face with the name, isn't it? Good to meet ya'll too. Easy to get lost in plants "over there" isn't it?
J.D.

Will y'all clue me in, please

Ms jolanaweb,
Ran into Ms Bo at North Texas' premier clandestine nursery - Carrie's. Not just anyone admits to having met me, you know. In fact, Carrie will now likely shoot at me as well as throw things at me as I clear her fence with another armload of donkey dooky.
J.D.

I know that part, lol
This is the part I don't get, lol

"However, from personal experience, I suggest you don't mention "C*TS". ; - )"

Oh, no. You aren't going to sucker me into that one - again!! ; - )

Now, I really want to know, LOL
Email me

LOL, I remember now

Hey, JD, the "donkey doo" is free - better come get some to fill in that new "big" bed you are WORKING on across the back. He did promise to get started on it, Jolana, and I think he really means it - he wants to have the best hummingbird smorsgasbord around.

Good going, JD

Carrie, it's too bad I have to come in the car, if I was in the truck I would get some donkey poo, lol

The shooter's family said they had never heard him speak in full sentences til they saw the videos delivered to NBC. It was a person they had never met. The boy had been mentally ill since he was a child.

They expressed the same frustration as I have experienced over trying to get help for someone who hasn't killed anyone yet. Mental illness is not treated by a lot of insurances, and you certainly cannot treat someone against their will. So people from the merely mentally incompetent, who cannot understand their bank account to people who don't understand most of what they hear and total whack jobs are roaming the street. The lawyers who booted prayer from school are also responsible for this.

I have been told that mental help can be gotten for a person who attempts assault, maybe, and maybe they'll just be dumped in jail.

This shooter was not stupid, but had no social skills, and did not even understand social skills. Like not knowing why girls don't want photos taken of them in class (especially under the desk). I have a relative like that in his 20's. He talks and can hold a job, but the strangest and most shocking things will come out of his mouth. He's trying to be cool and fit in. He still has the social outlook of a 15 year old (everyone is looking at me, judging me...)
I don't know what kind of mental problem that is.

Some seemingly normally functioning people turn up to be extraordinarily immature when you really get to know them. They have a fake "outside" persona and an infantile real personality. It's quite creepy.
I've heard the "perpetual teenager that has serious boundry issues described as a "sociopath" and "narissitic(sp?)PD" they also tend to be almost totally self-absorbed.PJ

There was a book written a dozen years ago, something about the Social IQ. I always meant to read that - but never found the time.

I work for someone like that! My 50 something year old boss acts like a middleschooler most of the time. He thinks it's funny.

But that's far removed from the mental illness that this VA Tech shooter had. What's sad is that he was hospitalized, was determined to be a danger to both himself and others, and was not only released but allowed to buy a gun. I'm sorry, but that should never have been allowed. I'm not advocating abandoning the 2nd ammendment, but people that have been clinically diagnosed as mentally ill and dangerous have no business being allowed to buy and own guns. I'm talking about people that really have no control over their actions, sort of like children. Cho was seriously mentally ill. There are limits to the 1st ammendment. I think it's reasonable to restrict clinically diagnosed dangerous people from buying guns. I may be stepping on some peoples' toes by suggestiing that, but lets be real. We don't allow children to buy or play with guns, (or we shouldn't, anyway) and that's a restriction. There needs to be some way of preventing people like Cho from buying guns, too. (I know, there's lots of illegal ways to get ahold of guns, but he bought his legally, didn't he? Please correct me if I'm wrong about him buying them legally, and I'll put my tail between my legs and stand corrected.) Of course, he should never have even been released from the hospital. I don't know why he was. Does anybody know?

Sally

Sally,
It appears he purchased it legally. There is a federally mandated form to fill out that specifically addresses the mental hospitalization of the applicant. I understood that Cho was not COMMITTED so he did not fail the mental capacity question. Not sure how a back ground check (as here in Texas) would have flagged his errant past.
J.D.

Okay, I thought he had been committed, and then released. It's just so very sad for all involved.

Sally

I cannot fathom the feelings of the loved ones left behind. We can only imagine - only imagine.

J.D.

I said I didn't think I'd say any more about the subject, but it seems appropriate and safe to continue.

My parents have been on my case for years to get my CCW permit. I come from folks who work/worked in law enforcement and I've had a gun in my hands since I was four. To this day, Daddy makes sure I practice, and I even won a target-shooting tournament last year, but I've never shot a living thing in my life, nor do I have the desire to do so. However, I wouldn't have any hesitation doing that very thing if my kids (or yours) were in danger and that was the only solution to the problem.

If Cho had been my beloved child, I would wish somebody would've neutralized him earlier, even by death if necessary, to save the other lives. Makes no difference WHY he was killing people, whether by mental illness or a depraved mind; either way, I would still wish he'd not been allowed to take so many lives and then his own. And if somebody else had been armed, maybe they could've simply taken him DOWN, not OUT, and he could've received treatment if he was found to be mentally ill, and I'd still have my child. That's said from a parent's point of view.

From a citizen's point of view, I can see advantages to him taking his own life--no lengthy, drawn-out trial to torture the victims' families, and God, who knows every man's heart, is the best judge of these things. It's in His hands now, and I guess that's right where it ought to be.

*******

J.D., sorry I didn't respond earlier--didn't get enough computer time over the weekend! It IS easy to get lost in plants "over there"! So beautiful! And "she" is such a neat person!

It's official now--I'm Bo B. and I'm a plantaholic. I realized it when my mouth went dry and my pulse quickened at the words "the donkey doo is free". I'd go get a truckload if only I lived closer to the source! I mean, don't get me wrong, I do have my own sources of donkey dookey around here, but it's not the kind I can use on my garden. ;-)

Bo, he probably would have pled insanity anyway. The thing that I am happiest over this whole mess is that the media actually "LISTENED" and quit running the footage over and over and over. I'm also glad that they were REQUIRED to be off the campus property before the students returned.

Kristi

I agree, Kristi.

"It's All About Him"

I thought this was a great article. Link is below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Click HERE

Good article. Too bad the rest of the press isn't as methodical in their thinking.

Amen sista!PJ