Virginia Tech Shooting

[Rick]

I can't help but think how unfortunate it is that none of the students, staff or guards were armed with a gun. I think that the chances of survival of anybody with a gun, and those in close proximity, would have gone up exponentially. What do you guys think?

[Martin Lenick]

If someone is going to shoot as many people as he can, the logical place to do so is in a "Gun-free Zone".

Read John Lott's book, "More Guns, Less Crime"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

[Rick]

If someone is going to shoot as many people as he can, the logical place to do so is in a "Gun-free Zone".

Read John Lott's book, "More Guns, Less Crime"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

That's why there should be no gun free zones. :peace:

[El 77]

I saw a article where the news reporter interviewed students who are members of the Virginia Tech Gun Club.

Students in the Virginia Tech Gun Club say they might have stopped the shootings sooner if they were allowed to have their weapons on campus.
The whole article is here:
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6390710&nav=1TjD

[MPIGP - Phillip Gordon]

That's why there should be no gun free zones. :peace:

Does carrying a gun really make a person safer? I know of several cases where the individuals went for their guns in an attempt to defend themselves and ended up getting shot. If they didn't have a gun to reach for, would they still be alive? I also know of cases where having a gun allowed the individuals to fend off the perpetrator. So which is the right and which is the wrong way to go? To each his own...you choose to carry a gun, I choose to carry a bible, because I believe when it's all said and done, it's God who decides when and how we leave this earth.

[Rick]

Does carrying a gun really make a person safer?

Does having a Porsche make someone faster?

If the person is trained, then yes.

I know of several cases where the individuals went for their guns in an attempt to defend themselves and ended up getting shot. If they didn't have a gun to reach for, would they still be alive?Lots of guys kill themselves on the race track. It's all about training.

I also know of cases where having a gun allowed the individuals to fend off the perpetrator. So which is the right and which is the wrong way to go? To each his own...you choose to carry a gun, I choose to carry a bible, because I believe when it's all said and done, it's God who decides when and how we leave this earth.The problem is that you can't "choose" to carry a gun in a lot of places without risking going to jail. So the only people who are carrying in those places are, by definition, felons.

[CIR-Reed]

I was going to leave this completely alone because I know that Rick and Martin are both very pro gun and and pro carrying a gun. I think very much the opposite but that is a discussion not worth having.

The only point I would make is:

Rick, you said,

"Lots of guys kill themselves on the race track. It's all about training."

You also have a quote as your signature from the great Ayrton Senna. He was considered to be the greatest driver that ever existed and by lots of people still is. Do you think he didn't have proper training? Even the best make mistakes and guns just aren't a risk thats worth it to me. I suggest that if a well renowned marksman accidentally shot himself in the face nobody would call it "lack of training." It would be refered to as a tragic accident involving a gun.

Last but not least, people like my mom already think racing is dangerous. I don't want to think about her googling the word "porsche" or the phrase "race track" and have it pull up a topic about gun safety. Could we please keep the two topics seperate. She already would be extremely upset if we bought an open wheel car.

*Just stating my opinion.*

[Rick]

You also have a quote as your signature from the great Ayrton Senna. He was considered to be the greatest driver that ever existed and by lots of people still is. Do you think he didn't have proper training?

I think that his death was due to an equipment malfunction and not due to a lack of skill.

Even the best make mistakes and guns just aren't a risk thats worth it to me. I suggest that if a well renowned marksman accidentally shot himself in the face nobody would call it "lack of training." It would be refered to as a tragic accident involving a gun.

True, but if the gun blew up like a fragment grenade when being used in a manner it is designed for, then it's not the marksman's fault.

[CIR-Reed]

I should have left this alone like I originally intended, I am an idiot.....


My point about Senna's death was that he made a mistake which resulted in his death. There was a long stint under full course yellow going slowly. His tires where cold and pressures where down. He made a mistake when he overdrove his car on cold tires causing it to bottom on the belly pan. When it bottomed he lost control of it. The result of his mistake was contact with a wall which resulted in the steering wheel detaching from the steering shaft which punctured his helmet and skull. In sumation, he made a mistake that caused his death. It was not a training issue.

Another example:
Brandon lee ( I think thats his name) was killed during the filming of the movie The Crow. A gun that was being used to film a scene where he shoots himself in the head either was to close to his head, or had some debris in it that came out when discharged, or whatever happened he ended up dead. Any way you look at it, it was human error.

So things can go wrong, accidentaly, due to human error.

The point I was trying to make was:
My personal belief is not to promote lots more people to carry guns. The point you made was in effect, if people are well trained they will not kill themselves or others with guns. This just isn't the case. Mistakes will happen. I will not have any guns in the house where my family lives, that is all I was trying to say.

[peterjank]

I agree with Reed's take on Senna's fatal crash. I have long felt that it was due to the pressence of the safety car and the restart that followed on cold tires. Remember that was the very first time a safety car had been used in an F1 race. It was a situation no one had ever actually experienced on track in an F1 car.

I have no comment on the gun issue.

[Rick]

Assume that you are one of the students in a classroom at Virginia Tech. You hear shooting in the next classroom. Would you want to be there with or without a gun?

[CIR-Reed]

Remember, I never said I don't think you should be allowed to have a gun or carry one. I just said it wasn't for me.

My point was that no matter how trained you are s%$t happens and that isn't worth the risk of ownership in my opinion.

My other point was that I did not want to see a conversation where motor racing was compared to hand gun ownership.

:peace:

[Adam Andrea]

Assume that you are one of the students in a classroom at Virginia Tech. You hear shooting in the next classroom. Would you want to be there with or without a gun?
All else being equal to what actually occurred, I'd want a gun. But "all else being equal" is an assumption you can't make. Unless we know all of the ramifications of allowing guns everywhere, and having higher gun ownership rates, we can't really use hypothetical situations as arguments. But, my best guess is that if guns were allowed in college campuses, there would be a LOT of cases of idiotic gun and drug-related injuries and deaths.

I concede that if one of the victims was carrying a gun, he may have been able to curtail what took place. But it doesn't logically follow that guns should be allowed on college campuses. There are people who die in crashes because their seat belts kept them from escaping their car, but I think I'll play the odds and buckle up. When it comes to allowing guns everywhere, I think the odds are a lot more obscure.

Say I was in an adjacent classroom, and I DID have a gun. I hear shooting, then shortly thereafter, someone comes into our classroom with a gun. Do I shoot right away? Do I wait for him to start shooting people? What If I did shoot, and it turned out to be an innocent student who heard the gunfire and went room to room to stop anything bad from happening. What If I had already drawn my gun and he saw and shot me? On the other hand, there is the possibility that I could stop the killer.


To go off on a tangent a little bit:

I have no problem with private gun ownership. The problem I have is with the attitude of a lot of gun owners. I've read through some gun forums online (one of which being at a website I frequent), and the typical mentality of the regular posters at these places is pretty disturbing. They take stupid risks and put themselves in dangerous situations, and then use those situations as justification for carrying firearms for self-defense. There is the constant tension and fixation on the guns they are carrying. The paranoia is overt - and I DO understand the difference between paranoia and concern about personal safety. I get the impression that a lot of these people would be a lot safer without the firearms.

At the forum I frequent, one poster told of him and his friend walking through a park at 4 in the morning, and a car approached to them, so they drew their weapons. It turned out to be a cop wondering what the hell they were doing in a park at 4 in the morning. Another poster described his encounter at a firing range during which he was approached by a man who waited for him to empty the magazine and chamber. He was worried that this guy purposely waited for him to unload the gun so he could target him somehow, when it was at least as likely that the guy was waiting for him to finish before he approached him simply out of courtesy of not disturbing him. The responses to these posts were almost all sympathetic. One saying you'll see a lot at this place is "if you're carrying one, you're carrying none". There are constant talks about "bug-out bags": Bags of supplies and weapons people should have in case "shit goes down". To me it really seems like they want it to happen so they can be some sort of hero, or at least justify having the weapon in the first place.

I get the impression that a lot of these people don't consider the added risk of carrying a weapon, and instead fixate completely on the potential it has to defend themselves or others. I personally don't see it as worth it, but that's just my take on it from the perspective of my own circumstances. If you tell me you own a gun, I'm certainly not going assume anything bad about you. I think there are people who should definitely carry one because of the types of situations they have to be in.

[Rick]

I see your logic Adam. But then again, there are 48 states which allow concealed carry and there seems to be no epidemic of people shooting each other. The instances where there are a large number of people shot are usually in gun free zones like schools or postal offices.

I'm sure there are those nuts who believe that world war three is around the corner and Russia and China are about to invade. But even without guns, those people probably have a ton of fertilizer saved up some where. But if we go with statistics, then those with CCW permits are less likely to commit crimes than those who do not have such permits.

[MPIGP - Phillip Gordon]

I should have left this alone like I originally intended, I am an idiot.....


My point about Senna's death was that he made a mistake which resulted in his death. There was a long stint under full course yellow going slowly. His tires where cold and pressures where down. He made a mistake when he overdrove his car on cold tires causing it to bottom on the belly pan. When it bottomed he lost control of it. The result of his mistake was contact with a wall which resulted in the steering wheel detaching from the steering shaft which punctured his helmet and skull. In sumation, he made a mistake that caused his death. It was not a training issue.

Another example:
Brandon lee ( I think thats his name) was killed during the filming of the movie The Crow. A gun that was being used to film a scene where he shoots himself in the head either was to close to his head, or had some debris in it that came out when discharged, or whatever happened he ended up dead. Any way you look at it, it was human error.

So things can go wrong, accidentaly, due to human error.

The point I was trying to make was:
My personal belief is not to promote lots more people to carry guns. The point you made was in effect, if people are well trained they will not kill themselves or others with guns. This just isn't the case. Mistakes will happen. I will not have any guns in the house where my family lives, that is all I was trying to say.

I couldn't agree more.

[Adam Andrea]

I see your logic Adam. But then again, there are 48 states which allow concealed carry and there seems to be no epidemic of people shooting each other. The instances where there are a large number of people shot are usually in gun free zones like schools or postal offices.

I'm sure there are those nuts who believe that world war three is around the corner and Russia and China are about to invade. But even without guns, those people probably have a ton of fertilizer saved up some where. But if we go with statistics, then those with CCW permits are less likely to commit crimes than those who do not have such permits.
There's may be no shooting epidemics, but I'm sure there are many cases of accidental deaths.

As for the nuts with a ton of fertilizer saved up, this makes a point for both of our arguments. It demonstrates that there are alternatives to guns in the case that guns were banned outright, but at the same time it shows that there are other ways to kill a large amount of people that would be nearly impossible to stop simply by arming the public.

Again, it comes down to a balance between the risk created and the right to defend yourself. If enough people own and carry guns, I think we'd probably have lower non-violent crime rates (people are going to be less likely to mug someone if there is a higher chance that the victim has a gun), but there are going to be many more accidental deaths. The real question is what will happen to the violent crime rate.

[peterjank]

I recommend the book "Freakonomics" if anyone is interested in reading some economic analysis of what drives crime rates. It is actually very accessible and readable. Highly unusual for a PhD economist.:)

[Martin Lenick]

My musings on the thread at this point, in no particular order or logical frame of mind:
………………..

I own lots of guns, but I have no desire to carry one, and don't bother keeping one accessible in my home. Confronted with a lethal threat, my best chance at survival is the attacker’s sense of humor, pity and disgust as pee runs down my leg. However, I wish there were a lot more law-abiding people carrying guns: an armed society is a polite society.
………………..

Someone’s ability to legally acquire, own (keep) or carry (bear) a gun doesn’t influence their ethics. Someone with a lack of ethics can acquire a gun, but would be a fool to do so when overwhelmingly outnumbered by an ethical society. Let’s work on ethics, not guns.
……………..

I don’t carry a gun or a Bible. As appalled as Reed was at the attempt to analogize gun tragedies with racing tragedies so am I with the implied either/or of carrying a gun or a bible for one’s defense.
……………..

“…it’s God who decides when and how we leave this earth.” I’d prefer that people who hold to that belief are not on the jury over a murder trial (or a parking ticket): “Not guilty, it was God that decided it was her time to die. The accused is an instrument of God. Who are you to judge God?”
……………..

Is it sacrilege to have an armor-plated Bible?
………….

Reed, I believe that if you were to be interested in guns for any reason, the safest place to be around them would be in your home. I’m a bit skeptical with your “accidents will happen” attitude when it comes to those over whom you would have influence. My grandma convinced us as kids, that if we came anywhere near the thermostat wire that ran along the ceiling above our Christmas dinner table that we would break her furnace and she would FREEZE TO DEATH. That wire ran along the very alluring I-beam that was our jungle-gym in the basement (basement being the only place large enough to let us all gather for holidays): if grandma kept us off the “monkey-bar” I-beam, being a mom or dad will keep everyone safe with a gun in the house. What has become of qualifications to be an ethical and influential mom or dad is a shame.
………………..

There is one person and one person only to blame for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.
…………….
Boy oh boy, I could go on and on... but it’s too serious of topic to continue at this time… hic.. Adam, sharpen up you debate; the blogs you paraphrase detract from your credibilty.

[Rick]

Assume that you are one of the students in a classroom at Virginia Tech. You hear shooting in the next classroom. Would you want to be there with or without a gun?

I have yet to see one person who is against CCW answer this question. It's a simple question that is directly related to the incident we are talking about. :peace:

[Martin Lenick]

I have yet to see one person who is against CCW answer this question. It's a simple question that is directly related to the incident we are talking about. :peace: Ditto. yet the argument has been deluded by the hackneyed claim of God's Will. Far be it for me to interfere with that... let 'em kill whomever God tells them to. It was God's will, after all, not the murder's. I've had more that my fair-share of loved ones murdered, but thanks to Al Gore and Sheryl Crow plastic bags will be as illeagal as guns. I feel better. Isn't that all that matters, that we all feel better?