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I will say this here and I will say this now.I think if someone would of reached out for him and become a close friend and changed him around a little maybe this would not happen.

I am speechless. I wonder what was the motiviation of the gunman now (besides being Galvatron crazy). My condolences and respects to the familiy of everybody involved. Even the gunman's because I am sure they didn't raised a psychopath on purpose and must be shocked about the issue as well.

Cyclonus_3009 wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho_Seung-hui

Somebody seems to have too much free time on his/her hands. AT leats He/she could have waited a couple of days... out of respect.

Cyclonus_3009 wrote:It says nothing about no video games,tv ,or music so obviously there not to blame.The killer just was..... idk how you put it.

I was wondering about that as well. Though is still too early to be shifting blame into anything.

metalformer wrote:

Cyclonus_3009 wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho_Seung-hui

Somebody seems to have too much free time on his/her hands. AT leats He/she could have waited a couple of days... out of respect.

Give the author the benefit of the doubt - maybe he's a VA Tech student and this is how he copes.

It's possible.

Either way, don't see how it's different than reporting it on the news immediately.

In the wake of Virgina Tech massacre it seems that I'm
forced to re-live my near miss with a school shooting.

Now you probably haven't heard of the Beech Grove Middle School shooting because fortunally nobody was killed the only thing that was shot was the cafeteria ceiling. I was sitting in the cafeteria alone (which is another subject for another day) reading a book called Nightmares when I heard a loud pop.
At first I thought it was someone popping a chip bag when I looked over and saw a small whiff of smoke and group kids circling around when the circle parting I saw a kid named Alvin Burke holding a gun to a girl's head threatening to shoot anyone that moved.

Now before I tell the rest of this story I guess I should tell you something about Alvin. Now I knew Alvin a bit but we were never what I would've considered friends, (although in the years since then I wonder if we would've been and if it would've made a difference).
He was about 16 years old in a class where the normal age was about 14, he had been held back 2 years straight and the rumor was that if he failed again he was going to be sent to a special school. A few days before the shooting he broke up with his girlfriend in a very nasty and very public spat, that got him expelled. Meaning he had failed for a third year.

Now back to story. When Alvin turned his back I saw my
chance to get away, my table was near the cafeteria door and across the hall was a the school book store (this was a place where kids could buy pencils, pens, paper and stuff like that) there was a pay phone in the corner as I was about to pick up the receiver a teacher, who was having her lunch in the school office, she had heard the shot and was going to check it out when she saw me I about had a damn near heart attack, and when she asked what was going on I had sputtered something trying to call 911 when another kid came out
of the cafeteria and said that Alvin had a gun and went
to tell the rest of the school office staff. The teacher grabbed me and toss me in where she, another teacher
and some other students were having lunch. Thank God
there was a phone in the room and she called 911 and
the police and SWAT team arrived. The rest of the kids in the cafeteria had fled.

Alvin had threatened to kill himself and the cops talked him out of it. He was arrested, and the last I had heard he was in prison.

Whenever I hear about the school shootings I think about how close I came to being killed, and make no mistake Alvin was armed to the teeth, if he saw make for that pay phone in that the book store corner or if that teacher hadn't came out when she did then I might not be here today.

I'm not trying to brag because I still have occasional nightmares about this. I'm just grateful that nobody was
hurt or killed. I was lucky but not as lucky as those poor
souls at VT my heart go out to the families of the victims.

Wow. That's one hell of a story.

I can't say I've ever had a gun pointed at me. Hell the closest I've been to death was my first car accident.

I can see where a kid brandishing a gun could give you nightmares. Glad you made it out safe.

Wow, you truly are blessed, man, the only near death experience is when I was nearly hit by a truck, not trying to brag or anything. I pray for those victims, though I still dont quite understand why he did it. Its not like the colombine shooting, where Eric and Dylan were teased to the point that they wanted to kill, this guy purposedly distanced himself from people, that and all that social hierarchy garbage goes away when you go to college.

One thing I think the media is doing wrong is to over-publicize the shooter. They should , after Columbine, know better than to do this by now. They point out how this scraplet thought of himself as a victim [him against the world]. There is too much risk of some other nut regarding him as a martyr, as he did the sewage responsible for Columbine, and doing this somewhere else.

flashmech wrote:One thing I think the media is doing wrong is to over-publicize the shooter. They should , after Columbine, know better than to do this by now. They point out how this scraplet thought of himself as a victim [him against the world]. There is too much risk of some other nut regarding him as a martyr, as he did the sewage responsible for Columbine, and doing this somewhere else.

I agree. I was totally disappointed by NBCs decision to air that fleshling's pathetic, incoherent drivel.

As for near-death experiences, I've had a couple from flying and SCUBA diving. For those of you who haven't SCUBA dived, it's pretty scary how quickly things can multiply against you.

... If the killer had such a bad life, he should've kept it to himself and got over it. If he doesn't like being made fun of, he should get over it.

As for his victims that were students... some of them were probably the people who made fun of him. My hearts go out to the families and the victims who haven't wronged him.

My heart doesn't go out to the killer, either.

Just saying.

Six Two One wrote:... If the killer had such a bad life, he should've kept it to himself and got over it. If he doesn't like being made fun of, he should get over it.

As for his victims that were students... some of them were probably the people who made fun of him. My hearts go out to the families and the victims who haven't wronged him.

My heart doesn't go out to the killer, either.

Just saying.

I don't think I agree with that. All the people who died were victims. Picking on someone or singling him out doesn't deserve such punishment. People are rideculed and bullied every day. He had phycological issues and I doubt it had everything to do with people making fun of him. He was a disturbed guy.

Six Two One wrote:... If the killer had such a bad life, he should've kept it to himself and got over it. If he doesn't like being made fun of, he should get over it.

That is seriously one of the most **** up things i've read.

If you have troubles in life you simply don't "get over it".

If you have mental issues you simply don't "get over it".

The guy clearly needed help but he didn't get it. Blame the system if you want, but the fact is, the guy had a sickness and that sickness consumed him and in the end a lot of people died because of that sickness.

Don't think for an instant i'm defending the guy, i'm not. He was sick, he was deranged. And he could NOT just "get over it". He needed professional help which for whatever reason, he didn't get it.

Hey, is it too much to ask that we stop devoting every little bit of media we can to this?

The problem is that it being on the media so much has turned everyone comepltely paranoid, as if school shootings had never happened before.

There's a community college somewhere near where I live. It got shut down until Monday so they can tell if a post on some dude's blog said something about shooting the school up.

Dude, if I had a nickel for every blog that said it was going to shoot someone, I'd probably own my own island. Let's say, Hawaii?

EDIT: I was wrong. They admitted there was no threat, as one person (Not necessarily the blogger himself) mentioned the shooting, and Campus security took it as a threat. But they kept the college closed, because they're totally effing paranoid.

And do you know who is to blame? The media. Yes, for once, I blame the media. If they had said "On a sadder note, thirty three people died in a school shooting. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families." instead of wasting every minute of the past week on the story (Which, how much is there really to report? Dude shot people, he was mentally ill, his family is sad. Do they really need to stretch it out this long) we'd have a much less paranoid country.

It's not that simple.

While I don't necessarily agree with the attention this guy has gotten in the media, you can't expect them to NOT say anything about it.

"On a sadder note, thirty three people died in a school shooting. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families."

You expect a news service to go with that and nothing but that? People WANT information. They WANT to know the full story. To me, if that's all they said i'd consider it to be highly inconsiderate and highly insensitive. People died, people want to know WHY they died.

If you want to blame someone for this, blame the lack of support for mental illness.

Burn wrote:The guy clearly needed help but he didn't get it. Blame the system if you want, but the fact is, the guy had a sickness and that sickness consumed him and in the end a lot of people died because of that sickness.

Too true, that's generally my argument when people badmouth suicide victims.

In this case, I think paraphrasing the show House really catches this particular situation though:

"Someone got sick and someone died because of it. It happens everyday. In this case they just happened not to be the same person."