leap-to-conclusions time!
I'll admit: this is pure rant-y speculation. That said:
I just have one question about the Virgina Tech massacre: how the fuck did this psycho shoot someone in a dorm and then hang out for two hours before shooting even more people in a classroom across campus? Where the fuck was the police response? Was the SWAT team doing another drug raid on an 80-year-old pensioner's house and unavailable?
I realize VT is a big campus, but two hours passed between the first shootings and the second, deadlier shootings. Since they didn't catch the gunman after the first shooting, that place should have been swarming with cops, the entire campus evacuated and locked down. But what did officials do? They sent out an e-mail saying they were "investigating" the dorm shootings, and that students should stay inside-meanwhile, the gunman was shooting up another classroom across campus. The cops apparently didn't respond in force until after the second shootings.
It's probably too early to be pissed off about this; we certainly don't have many details about what happened. But somebody is going to pay for this beyond the 30 or so who have already lost their lives. Yet I fear the only real fallout will be another attack on gun rights. Because, you know, only gun bans can prevent this from happening again, right?
EDIT: LawDog weighs in on the bitter irony of a bill which would have allowed concealed carry on college campuses dying in committee in the Virginia legislature-and a Virginia Tech spokesman being "appreciative" about the bill's demise. Your students' blood is on your hands, asshole.
EDITx2: The latest update from AP:
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
Except there were multiple shootings at the dorm, not just one. It would still seem prudent to lock down the campus as a precaution, no?
Steger said the university decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means of notifying members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out to everyone.
It's called radio. And television. And, you know, cops stationed at every entrance to the campus. I can think of lots of ways they might have been able to get the word out, and I'm sitting 2,000 miles away.
I just have one question about the Virgina Tech massacre: how the fuck did this psycho shoot someone in a dorm and then hang out for two hours before shooting even more people in a classroom across campus? Where the fuck was the police response? Was the SWAT team doing another drug raid on an 80-year-old pensioner's house and unavailable?
I realize VT is a big campus, but two hours passed between the first shootings and the second, deadlier shootings. Since they didn't catch the gunman after the first shooting, that place should have been swarming with cops, the entire campus evacuated and locked down. But what did officials do? They sent out an e-mail saying they were "investigating" the dorm shootings, and that students should stay inside-meanwhile, the gunman was shooting up another classroom across campus. The cops apparently didn't respond in force until after the second shootings.
It's probably too early to be pissed off about this; we certainly don't have many details about what happened. But somebody is going to pay for this beyond the 30 or so who have already lost their lives. Yet I fear the only real fallout will be another attack on gun rights. Because, you know, only gun bans can prevent this from happening again, right?
EDIT: LawDog weighs in on the bitter irony of a bill which would have allowed concealed carry on college campuses dying in committee in the Virginia legislature-and a Virginia Tech spokesman being "appreciative" about the bill's demise. Your students' blood is on your hands, asshole.
EDITx2: The latest update from AP:
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
Except there were multiple shootings at the dorm, not just one. It would still seem prudent to lock down the campus as a precaution, no?
Steger said the university decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means of notifying members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out to everyone.
It's called radio. And television. And, you know, cops stationed at every entrance to the campus. I can think of lots of ways they might have been able to get the word out, and I'm sitting 2,000 miles away.