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16 April 2007

NewsFilter: At least 22 dead at Virginia Tech. My alma mater. Hey, world? You suck.
post by: mike9322 at: 11:33 | 111 comments
That's so awful. Words are inadequate.
posted by essexjan 16 April | 11:35
I know, I know. Perspective. Dozens or hundreds dying everyday in Iraq. But that's a warzone. This is Blacksburg fucking Virginia, a tiny country town that wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the beautiful, wonderful university. It's quiet and it's safe, and this is absolutely shattering news.

At least 22 dead, at least 28 wounded. That's at least fifty people who were shot. I am shaking and there is a lump in my throat.
posted by mike9322 16 April | 11:37
Holy cow! That's awful.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 April | 11:37
Sweet Lord. Wonder what this asshole's 'explanation' is going to be.
posted by jonmc 16 April | 11:46
We'll probably never know. He's being reported as among the dead.
posted by mike9322 16 April | 11:48
This is so sickening. I'm so tired of it - the random violence, the crassness, the lost-ness, the loneliness, the fear, the death death death everywhere. What a sick fucking culture we are. Students, a normal morning at college.
posted by Miko 16 April | 11:51
My God, and I thought I was having a bad day.
posted by stilicho 16 April | 11:52
On the blue
posted by mike9322 16 April | 11:53
The blue is down for me, but so is MSNBC.

Also, "the number of fatalities is expected to rise". That's ... not ... good.
posted by stilicho 16 April | 11:59
Oh god. How totally fucking horrible and wrong. I'm tearing up here; one of my closest friends is a Blacksburg alum. Shit, shit shit. WHAT. THE. FUCK. UNIVERSE?
posted by mygothlaundry 16 April | 12:01
Ugh, mike. I know what you're going through, seriously I do *coughDawsonCollegeshootingcough* I will send happy thoughts to you and Virginia Tech. I seriously hope the injured do well and that no more people die.

I hate the cowardice behind these types of shootings. You kill a pile of people and then yourself? At least have the guts to deal with the consequences of your decisions! It's time like this when believing in hell helps to keep one sane. One needs to believe that this person will be held accountable for their actions, even if it isn't in this world.

It also makes my personal crises completely insignificant.
posted by LunaticFringe 16 April | 12:03
It also makes my personal crises completely insignificant

Yup, no more bitching about Verizon for me.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 April | 12:07
I attended the University of Texas at Austin, and although I attended nearly 20 years after Charles Whitman shot all those folks from the observation deck of the Main Building, I don't think I ever so much as glanced at the building without at least fleetingly thinking of him. One of my high-school teachers (in Florida) had had a son attending school there that day who wound up cringing under a lab table with one of his professors nervously eating raisins and wondering when it'd be safe to come out.
posted by PaxDigita 16 April | 12:12
Hey, looks like the USA is catching up with Canada for campus shootings!

Any chance VT is a women's campus? Shooting women is how we do it in Canada.
posted by Five Fresh Fish 16 April | 12:21
Any chance VT is a women's campus? Shooting women is how we do it in Canada.


What an appropriate time for clever quips!
posted by danf 16 April | 12:23
My parents were at UT when Whitman went on his rampage. My aunt was injured in the Edgar Allan Poe school bombing. Why school violence is treated as a relatively "new" phenomenon by the media always frustrates me.

Though, as I type this, Reuters has changed their remarks from comparing this shooting to Columbine to comparing it to the one at UT.
posted by WolfDaddy 16 April | 12:24
Any chance VT is a women's campus?

No, it isn't. Please don't joke about this. Not now.
posted by danostuporstar 16 April | 12:24
.
posted by me3dia 16 April | 12:27
All those poor parents. My heart breaks.
posted by jrossi4r 16 April | 12:29
I'm thinking about you and Abe and Jim, mike. And all the alumns. Brrrrr.
posted by rainbaby 16 April | 12:32
Any chance VT is a women's campus? Shooting women is how we do it in Canada.

I don't know what Canada you're from but I hope it's not my Canada. Don't you think it's a little too soon for the jokes? This is a mourning thread, you wanna joke then take it outside.

Jackass.
posted by LunaticFringe 16 April | 12:36
The good news is that, although "believes that there is a right for people to bear arms," "President Bush is shocked."

This is really morbid, and I apologize for mentioning it, but I went to UT Austin too. During the tour they give prospective freshmen, they point out some of the bullet holes around the Tower. (At least they did 15-20 years ago.) It came off as a weird point of pride. In fact, until several years ago, there was no memorial -- no mention at all -- of Whitman's victims.
posted by mudpuppie 16 April | 12:46
Didn't mean for that last comment to come off as glib. This is horrible.
posted by mudpuppie 16 April | 12:47
This is the deadliest campus shooting in US history. I can't imagine how horrifying it must have been in that classroom. The last thing many of those people probably thought was, "Why?"

Senseless.
posted by mike9322 16 April | 12:49
Wolfdog, too. So sorry. And any other SW/VA people out there. It's a bucolic place. So strange and awful.
posted by rainbaby 16 April | 12:52
i say we invade iran thisafternoon.
posted by quonsar 16 April | 13:01
He did this with 2 handguns. Meaning, he pointed and pulled a trigger for every individual bullet he fired. And reloaded. Refuckingloaded.

This wasn't a spray of bullets from an automatic weapon. He willfully aimed and fired. One at a time.
posted by mike9322 16 April | 13:15
so, an ambitious fucker, eh?
posted by quonsar 16 April | 13:17
.
posted by chewatadistance 16 April | 13:19
My god, how terrible.
posted by tr33hggr 16 April | 13:23
Yes, pretty sickening. SNAFU
posted by omiewise 16 April | 13:25
Aw, quonsar. Play nice.
posted by mudpuppie 16 April | 13:25
What the hell?
One of my old profs was from VT. I've been considering sending an email, but I doubt that would be appropriate...
posted by casarkos 16 April | 13:33
My thoughts are with the people at VT and their families.
posted by deborah 16 April | 13:39
On the mefi link there is a purported link to the shooter's Myspace. Along with a whole ton of nearly naked posters on it he had a picture of a man doing "it" with a person-sized scorpion.

Anyone who would post a picture like that is sick enough to shoot up a campus.

(I'm freaked because I dreamed about a scorpion last night.I'm way more freaked, and horrified, and incredibly grieved about the shootings. I have kids that age.)
posted by bunnyfire 16 April | 13:42
oh man. Horrible. I have many many friends from Tech, and used to love visiting that beautiful campus and meeting all the great people that went there. I still have fond memories of being there, especially in the fall. I know this doesn't really have anything to do with anything...
posted by Hellbient 16 April | 13:42
.
posted by By the Grace of God 16 April | 13:44
bunnyfire, first of all, the myspace link came from Fark, so likelihood of being true hovers somewhere below 50%. Second, the scorpion sex photo is a C-list internet meme like CeilingCat, and it was posted by a friend of his (probably as a joke). If you click on it you go to a site that has thousands of those joke images.

The first comment (at the bottom) seems to think that it's actually William Morva, the guy who shot a cop off campus last year. (This is probably how it got picked up by Fark.)

The guy seems to have a bunch of friends, and none of them are posting there saying what a bad person he is now, so it's probably bogus.
posted by stilicho 16 April | 13:52
Drudge Report saying now it was probably a young Asian man?

(thanks for the fark info. I don't frequent it and obviously, I remain ignorant of those types of memes most of the time. )
posted by bunnyfire 16 April | 13:59
Okay, I heard an interview from one of the victims who was shot in the arm-he said it was an Asian guy in his twenties. Guy didn't say anything, just shot up the room and continued on to the next.
posted by bunnyfire 16 April | 14:06
"an Asian guy in his twenties" : Another doctorate delayed?
posted by mischief 16 April | 14:13
...Along with a whole ton of nearly naked posters on it he had a picture of a man doing "it" with a person-sized scorpion.
Anyone who would post a picture like that is sick enough to shoot up a campus.


Actually that scorpion-sex thing is a French anti Aids ad campaign (scroll down). Just FYI nsfw goes without saying yeah?.

And this shooting, so terrible. No way to make sense out of something like that, and my mind wants to find a reason ending up in the conspiracy corner of "brain washed to kill" corner. It's just so... Yeah, WHY? .
posted by dabitch 16 April | 14:20
I can't even make sense.
posted by dabitch 16 April | 14:21
Anyone who would post a picture like that is sick enough to shoot up a campus.

What does this even mean?
posted by omiewise 16 April | 14:36
hee hee hee!
posted by quonsar 16 April | 14:44
On the mefi link there is a purported link to the shooter's Myspace. Along with a whole ton of nearly naked posters on it he had a picture of a man doing "it" with a person-sized scorpion.

Anyone who would post a picture like that is sick enough to shoot up a campus.

bunny, correlation does not equal causality. I (and I'd wager many other contributors here) posess photos that would make those look demure and none of us have shot up anything. His myspace page looks like a typical young guy's myspace page to me, so i doubt there's any clues there.
posted by jonmc 16 April | 14:47
What does this even mean?

It means people who like weird pictures of animals are cold-blooded killers.

Oh no, we're all doomed!!!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 April | 14:48
I once read on Drudge that those there Asians make pornos with octopusses and the squid and with the human naughty bits all hidden and stuff. Now, that's just not right.
posted by danostuporstar 16 April | 14:53
Actually that scorpion-sex thing is a French anti Aids ad campaign.

Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I posted that here on MeCha last fall. I'm with jonmc. I don't think there's any sensible generalizations we can make about "someone who would do a thing like this." At least, not predictive ones.
posted by pieisexactlythree 16 April | 14:58
"an Asian guy in his twenties" : Another doctorate delayed?
posted by mischief 16 April | 14:13

hee hee hee!
posted by quonsar 16 April | 14:44

Not going to satisfy the trolls giving them the outrage they're trying to provoke. I will say, though, that I know you both have kids, and I think that the concern people are showing here would provide substantially less fodder for your entertainment if it had been one of your kids who was shot.

So, carry on.
posted by mudpuppie 16 April | 15:02
now reporting 31 dead. 31.
posted by Hellbient 16 April | 15:06
Wow, this is really shitty. I'm sorry, mike.
posted by cmonkey 16 April | 15:12
This is just terrible, and although I know it solves nothing to express my shock and horror, I can't help but do so.

Why, in the name of humanity, when something like this happens, does the next insane person have to try and top the death toll? Maybe that's just a skewed perception on my part, but crimes that seem so horrific, only end up, in this world of ours, getting topped by the next incident.

I can understand emotions like despair, jealousy, anguish, even hate, and I can even understand suicide. I cannot understand mass murder.
posted by Savannah 16 April | 15:16
I (and I'd wager many other contributors here) posess photos that would make those look demure and none of us have shot up anything.


Jessamyn posted the link to the chicken after all; we haven't seen any postal activity out of her yet.
posted by Mitheral 16 April | 15:20
His myspace page looks like a typical young guy's myspace page to me, so i doubt there's any clues there

I must not get out much.

But really; I have (involuntarily) seen goatze and inadvertently run across Tubgirl, and I am aware that there are naughty pics out there, but for some reason the scorpion one horrified me more than anything I have ever seen or heard of, and not because it was a sexual photo.

Ignore me. I have had a bad bipolar week, I just got done wrestling with doing the bills, and then I log on and see that literal Hell broke loose on that campus. Today was not the day I needed to see scorpion porn for the first time.
posted by bunnyfire 16 April | 15:36
I must not get out much.

Nah, generation gap. Pics like that and stuff from stileproject, consumptionjunction and the like are the modern cyber version of gory comics and making fart noises in class to most, from my observations. Like I said there's no clues there.
posted by jonmc 16 April | 15:40
I think it is importaint to take a breath and realize that overall these this are pretty rare. They are horrible and awful and things are going to be pretty miserable there for awhile, but 1) each incident does not top the last. Not too long after the Columbine shooting there was a school shooting in Red Lake MN, a lot fewer casualties, 2) America is a big country(too big?), and firearms are not difficult to get(this is not a comment regarding gun control, just an observation) so we will collect more than our fair share of these things, but it doesn't happen all that often. When they do the media coverage goes ape shit so it sticks in our minds pretty strongly.

My condolences to those who are affected by this, I hope things get better soon.
posted by edgeways 16 April | 15:53
it is importaint to take a breath and realize that overall these this are pretty rare

That's true, but I can only speak for myself: My reaction is not because I fear it happening more, or worse next time. My reaction is a pure sadness, the same one I always feel for murder victims, but especially those who had no prior connection with their killer. To be going about your day in a purely innocuous way and then to be helplessly confronted with your own violent death for no reason - that's what upsets me, the knowledge that these people had to endure their last moments on earth in fear, shock, and horror, with absolutely no understanding of why this was happening. It's tragic when it happens to one person, more so when many families at once have to contend with a grief that will never make sense. Not ever.
posted by Miko 16 April | 16:14
Miko has brought life to my thoughts so perfectly. Thanks, miko, for being much more articulate than me.
posted by mike9322 16 April | 16:21
Miko, you are right, of course, anytime is too many times.
posted by edgeways 16 April | 16:28
My god, this is so awful!

Aside from the obvious shock and sadness, what I'm having a hard time grasping is that there wasn't a campus-wide warning issued via the intercom system! They sent out an email (?!) around 9.30, fifteen minutes after the main rampage started, but why wasn't a warning issued after the first murders (two hours earlier)?

The rampage began about 7:15 a.m. ET at West Ambler Johnston, a coeducational residence hall that houses 895 people The gunman, armed with a 9-mm pistol and a .22-caliber handgun, killed two people there before making his way two hours later to Norris Hall, an engineering classroom building on the opposite end of the 2,600-acre campus.
posted by Specklet 16 April | 16:29
This is so sad. I have no words.
posted by Pips 16 April | 16:49
I heard someone wiser than I am, when confronted with the horror that someone must have preceding a violent death, say, "it only happened to them once."

This was strangely comforting to me, when I heard it.
posted by danf 16 April | 17:07
I don't really know what to say about this. It's absolutely horrible, in the truest definition of the word. Someone pointed out on the community list for my alma mater (a small engineering and science grad school) that this shooting will hopefully lead to some changes in on-campus emergency response systems. That academically intense programs will step up efforts to identify students who have "cracked." But of course, the same things were said after other senseless massacres...
posted by muddgirl 16 April | 17:26
Miko, you are right, of course, anytime is too many times.

agreed, it doesn't make sense. it's terrible. and coupled with the media's scrambling orgiastic feeding frenzy and the human need to point and stare and blame someone... anyone for what's likely going to prove a random senseless act... i mean for chrissake the armchair analysts are already bellowing about suing the school!?! does anyone think maybe the school administration has enough remorse already? what ails our society that people can't accept that sometimes shit goes really fucking pear-shaped for no apparent reason?

sure, absolutely, be angry about it; if that righteous anger helps some public anti-crime crusade or something, then all the better.

but i'll bet had anyone asked the school administration two months ago what their plans were for this sort of scenario... well, REALISTICALLY what do you think they'd have done? maybe issued a tinfoil hat.

shit. fucking. happens. it's not right shit, or moral shit, or even shit that makes sense, and no, we don't have to complacently put up with it. outrage, sure - this is some sick, ugly shit that's Very Not Okay, but is largely analogous to, geez i dunno aliens landing or something.

and the truly sick part is that so long as this sort of insanity gets the level of media hype and the political pandering orgy it currently seems to be attracting, there'll always be some other nutcase out there waiting in the wings hoping to 'make a statement'.

anyone remember the rounds of 'copycat' school shootings after Columbine?

egh. i'm inarticulate. i'm shocked. i cringe at the political rhetoric shitstorm this will provoke, and weep to think of the vultures who are going to make their lucrative career platform out of the corpses of innocent college kids.

i know people are sad about this and feel the need to discuss it, and believe me i have no issues with that... problem is that need only feeds the frenzy. and ultimately, does fixating on the body count and gluing oneself to CNN bring back the dead or comfort the survivors? i just don't know.

me, i'm going to go give a couple of college kids I know a hug today. it sure won't bring back the dead, but i hope the living appreciate it.
posted by lonefrontranger 16 April | 17:31
J**k Th*mpson has already been on teevee blaming the shooting on video games.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs 16 April | 18:14
It's horrible. I'm so sorry for the victims and their families, and for everyone at VT. It's a nightmare.

For what? Why?
posted by LoriFLA 16 April | 18:31
Today was not the day I needed to see scorpion porn for the first time.

That sure doesn't make you weird. There's never a good time for scorpion porn, that's what I always say.

Doesn't help I just watched the Shelob sequence in RotK yesterday.
posted by stilicho 16 April | 20:40
Damn, puppie, if I'm going to troll, it's gonna be whole lot better than that.
posted by mischief 16 April | 20:59
wow, mike. I am sorry. This thing is so hard for all of us, I can't imagine for you, having been there or for those who know people now in VT.
posted by carmina 16 April | 21:21
April 20, 1889: Hitler born, Austria
April 19, 1993: FBI raid in Waco, TX
April 19, 1995: Bombing in Oklahoma City, OK
April 20, 1999: Shooting in Columbine, CO

The third week in April has a longstanding history of being extremely lousy.
posted by Triode 16 April | 21:48
For what? Why?
As hard as it may be to comprehend at times like this, there often is no why - sometimes it really is as simple as "shit happens" and no amount of analysis, warning systems, support networks or whatever you want to decide would have helped make the tiniest bit of difference. Today was the day that this bit of shit happening was fated and that's that.
posted by dg 16 April | 22:03
True dg, there is now why. I know this in my head, but I can't help to ask the question.
posted by LoriFLA 16 April | 22:10
That's quite true, dg. I remember reading an interview with a writer who had written a novel about the Columbine murders. She did a lot of research into what makes a kid go on a shooting rampage like this, and said at a certain point she just had to stop doing research, because there was no set factors, no definite warning signs. It's truly a statistical anomaly for someone to go on a rampage like this and murder a lot of people.
posted by Orange Swan 16 April | 22:18
I think there is a bit of a why, and that is social/emotional isolation. I think it's a cultural problem and occasional homocidal maniacs are a symptom.

Triode, that is such a wild observation. There is an AskMe thread about it - is it confirmation bias, etc.
posted by Miko 16 April | 22:19
I think there is always a why, it may not be the why that people want to hear or accept, but there is a why. There was a series of events that led this fellow to commit these horrible acts, not a logical, rational, justifiable series for most people, but sometimes people break so badly that this happens. I wish he had received the help he needed before he ruined so many other lives. The pain is going to spread now.
posted by edgeways 16 April | 22:25
"There was a series of events that led this fellow to commit these horrible acts"

Not necessarily.

"I wish he had received the help he needed"

Assuming he needed help. Fits of violence like this can be spontaneous.
posted by mischief 16 April | 22:37
But the events that led him to be the sort of person who would even think to do this weren't spontaneous...they were probably created over a lifetime, as edgeways says.
posted by Miko 16 April | 22:43
Well, I think that every event that happens to a person is a result of every other event that has happened to them up to that point, so I can hardly disagree with you, Miko (not that I would dare anyway ;-). I think that somewhere in this person's past (could have been five minutes before, could have been five years), something happened that set him off down this path and it would have only taken one little thing to happen to steer him in a different direction. It's kind of like the urban legend of the guy who jumped off a bridge, leaving in his home a note saying "if just one person smiles as me on the way to the bridge, I won't jump" - someone could have provided the trigger to stop the subsequent events, yet been totally oblivious that they had even had any interaction with that person.

I think it is easy to say that there must have been a definable trail of events leading up to something like this, but there almost never is, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves of the opposite. As humans, we feel the need to identify a clear causal relationship between the things around us, so we rationalise, justify and generally massage the facts into a truth that we can deal with. Human beings are really just an incredibly complicated and mostly undocumented machine - simpler machines regularly work perfectly well right up until the moment they break irreparably and humans are no different.
posted by dg 16 April | 23:14
"the events that led him to be the sort of person who would even think to do this weren't spontaneous"

Again, you are assuming that "events led him to be sort of person to do this". People can and do snap for no preconditioning reason whatsoever, much like a brain aneurysm. Even the fact that the guy had two guns with the serial numbers defaced does not preclude his snapping.

I'm not saying that is what happened, nor that it is even likely, only that it is possible. Given what has been reported so far, everything is speculation.
posted by mischief 16 April | 23:37
Okay, bunnies, I'm pi$$ed and want to get this off my chest, so stand by, strong message follows:

I'm frustrated and angry just like I was with those two high school boys in Colorado. Apparently the overwhelming majority of people are sheep who just sit on their hands listening to the shots and screams and waiting their turn. Folks will watch all sorts of violent stuff in the movies on TV, inexplicably for “entertainment,” but when they’re confronted with senseless violence in real life, they just shut down. I’d probably have gotten my head blown off (although I’d’ve been ducking and weaving laterally as I closed in), but I’d have charged the @$$hole with whatever I had handy that could put an eye out: When you suffer grievous eye damage, you’re generally unable to do anything effective with a firearm afterward. And the only thing I'd regret is that I hadn't nailed the mutt sooner and saved more lives.
posted by PaxDigita 17 April | 08:10
Regarding getting the word out, my first thought was, "Where was Twitter?" I realize that when survival is paramount, the last thing one might consider is texting. However, if one kid had the composure to record the sound of the bullets on his cell phone, and another took pictures with theirs, I can't help but wonder what the role of Twitter could have been had it been the main mechanism of message delivery instead of email from the authorities to the students.
posted by chewatadistance 17 April | 08:14
There's a wee problem with twitter that the messenger can't choose to dictate "txt everyone on my friends list" in such a case (when they really need the txt), and a lot of people set twitter to "off" on their phones during the day/classes/night as frankly, having 20-odd friends txting you all day gets tired real fast. I wish there was a way to select "txt this" and "im/web this" when sending twitters, as some thing clearly are more important than others.

I'm still stunned, this is horrible, and the emails sent to students seemed to take forever as well, showing I guess that the administration knew nothing of what was happening either.
posted by dabitch 17 April | 08:47
Pax: I'll bet 9/11 sent you into screaming fit and those guys didn't even use guns. What you describe is what I call "deer in the headlights" conditioning that goes along with that "victim is not to blame" mindset.

This VT situation becomes even more egregious as we learn that the shooter had two handguns, one of them a .22! A .22! Do you know how accurate you have to shoot a .22 to kill someone with one shot? You can be shot in the head by a .22 and have reasonable chances not only to survive but to heal completely.

Further, as someone mentioned above, he had to reload more than a couple times. Reloading takes time, time for others to react.

This senselessness of this event extends well beyond the actions of a lone gunman.
posted by mischief 17 April | 09:44
The third week in April has a longstanding history of being extremely lousy.

Not so!

April 20, 19**- BIRTH OF THEPINKSUPERHERO!

WOO!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 17 April | 10:08
"There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital.

What?! 30 dead and 15 wounded with at least 3 bullets each? That's at least 135 separate gunshots. At least 6 mandatory reloads.

Time to see what the blogosphere has to say about that.
posted by mischief 17 April | 10:10
mischief, ref 9/11:

As the second tower fell and I realized I wasn't seeing an instant replay of the first one, I broke the stunned silence in the breakroom by commenting, "Somebody has one hell of an operations officer."

Negative screaming fits. I get real quiet and focused when the $hit's going down, figuring and discarding potential moves and likely outcomes.

"Beware the fury of a patient man." -- Dryden

.22LR ammo at close range, in the right type of handgun, can be damned effective -- some rounds, like Eleys, are one-shot-one-kill devastating. Dunno what this guy had, but Mob hitters double-tap people in the head with just any ol' .22 ammo, and it seems to work for them.
posted by PaxDigita 17 April | 10:11
CNN mentions the .22 was a Walther but no one else seems to have reported more.
posted by mischief 17 April | 10:30
"There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital.

Horribly awkwardly worded, but *damn*
posted by mike9322 17 April | 10:41
I think it is easy to say that there must have been a definable trail of events leading up to something like this

There's been a lot of research on violence, and there are a lot of identifiable factors that are commonly found in people who commit violent acts. These include:

-being male
-being straight
-being low income
-having endured family violence as a child
-having had parental discipline at the extremes - either excessively harsh or overly lax and neglectful
-having displayed prior cruelty (such as cruelty to animals or bullying)
-having already committed criminal acts
-mental illness
-poor grades, poor school performance, learning disabilites
-social isolation
-drugs and alcohol
-antisocial attitudes
-(there are, of course, more)

Again, not saying they necessarily cause the violent behavior, but these factors correlate with it so often that they are significant. Stable people really don't just snap; not like this. I reject the idea that an emotionally balanced, normally functioning individual would suddenly become a mass murderer without the influence of pre-existing negative factors.

You're right, mischief, in that it may not take much to push someone over the edge. But it takes a lot to get them to the edge.
posted by Miko 17 April | 10:54
"I reject the idea that an emotionally balanced, normally functioning individual would suddenly become a mass murderer without the influence of pre-existing negative factors."

OK, stay in your comfort zone, I was simply stressing that the very highly improbable is not the same as impossible. Besides, as more information is reported on the sex angle of this case, the point is probably moot anyway.
posted by mischief 17 April | 11:07
My information is not coming from a comfort zone, but from reality. Violence has long been a subject of study, so we have a lot of information about it. Violence is rarely truly random, though its victims can be. Though there may have been a romantic disappointment at play, emotionally and mentally stable people can endure a romantic disappointment without resorting to mass murder.
posted by Miko 17 April | 11:17
"Violence is rarely truly random..."

Keyword: "rarely".
posted by mischief 17 April | 11:36
mischief, I like you, but in this thread you are being both pedantic and obtuse. I's like it if you found some other way to amuse yourself.
posted by Specklet 17 April | 11:39
I get the point, mischief, but you seem to be belaboring it. We don't know for sure the 7am shooting was related to the 9am one either. But given what we know of the realities of the world, we can assume they are connected with a high degree of accuracy. Likewise, we don't know that the gunman had "pre-existing negative factors" but experience shows us he probably did. That's not retreating to a comfort zone, that's using common sense.
posted by danostuporstar 17 April | 11:42
Hey, uh, mischief? Go watch Mr. Occam shave and get a clue, 'k? You already lost one bet in this thread.
posted by PaxDigita 17 April | 11:48
"You already lost one bet in this thread."

I did? I thought I was just having a discussion with you all.
posted by mischief 17 April | 11:51
Whatever mischief's point is, it doesn't seem to apply in this case, as it doesn't in the vast majority of other cases of mass violence. Though there is very limited information available about this murderer, the Chicago Tribune already has a succinct characterization of him including the information that he displayed several of the risk factors, including social isolation, criminal history, and history of mental illness, and that he produced creative writing 'so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.'

Obviously not every single person who has violence risk factors will do something like this, and not every person who does something like this will have a lot of obvious risk factors that we can point to. If we could predict mass violence with 100% accuracy, we obviously would, and would take steps to prevent it. Still, the evidence is pretty strong that these incidents don't involve a normal person 'just snapping.' I'd suggest that someone who just snaps probably wasn't as normal as they might seem to begin with. The risk factors have been identified in order to increase the probability that violent behavior can be prevented by the social safety net before it has such serious effects.

Anyone who thinks they're likely to 'just snap' one day is in need of some help.
posted by Miko 17 April | 11:54
-being male
-being straight
-being low income
-having endured family violence as a child
-having had parental discipline at the extremes - either excessively harsh or overly lax and neglectful
-having displayed prior cruelty (such as cruelty to animals or bullying)
-having already committed criminal acts
-mental illness
-poor grades, poor school performance, learning disabilites
-social isolation
-drugs and alcohol
-antisocial attitudes

*cxhecks self into bin*
posted by jonmc 17 April | 12:26
I was going to write something long, but instead I just say, I'm with mischief.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 17 April | 12:36
I'm with SCIENCE.

A natural bent towards slothfulness may work as a protective factor in certain cases, jon. Mass violence is a lot of fuss and bother, after all. Better to deal with stressors this way: crack a cold one, nosh on some peanuts and say 'ah, fuck it.'

;)
posted by Miko 17 April | 12:37
A natural bent towards slothfulness may work as a protective factor in certain cases, jon.

Indeed. as a couple of greasepainted white rappers once said "if I only cared I'd set the world on fire..."

(actually, I've always had a theory that it's a very thin line that separates Holden Caulfield from Travis Bickle and I'm not ven sure what the line is.)
posted by jonmc 17 April | 12:46
"crack a cold one, nosh on some peanuts and say 'ah, fuck it.'"

Wow, it's like you've known me forever. ;>
posted by arse_hat 17 April | 12:46
It's awful. I think Miko said it best, about halfway up from here. The most sobering thought is that these people were going about their day, and end up spending their last moments on Earth in horror, pain, and disbelief, without a clue as to why they were dying.
The most recent blurb on the news is of the note he left in his dorm room. In it he railed against "rich boys", "debauchery", and "deceitful charlatans". He wrote "Ishmael Acts" in red at the bottom of the page, and reports say it's also written on his arm. Not much is known yet about him, as he was apparantly a loner. But as so many of you have noted - possibly a lifetime of small "hurts" against him steered him to the path he chose. How I wish he and so many others like him really had "just cracked a cold one, noshed on some peanuts, and said 'fuck it."
posted by redvixen 17 April | 13:37
Ok forgive my indulgence about the twitter idea. It strikes a nerve with me when immediate dismissal of a possible good and workable idea is proposed. One of the main tactics of applying creativity [to arrive at apt solutions] is that we're much more likely to develop a successful idea by toning down a seemingly impossible one, than to dress up an idea that has been done to death.

While there are challenges to making it work, not ALL students were in a class at the time. Maybe there should be a First Responder Team developed for possible future incidents that could help spread the word to hunker down? True, there is vagueness and confusion while what is happening is underway - how would they be able to predict that the guy would toodle across campus and blow away dozen more people? They might not be able to. But someone (a First Responder?) on the scene of the second incident could spread word quickly, and possibly reduce the danger for some.

At least I know I wasn't the only person to which the idea occurred.

/end rant
posted by chewatadistance 17 April | 15:42
And no offense intended, dabitch!
I'm sensitive today. I shall crawl back under my rock.
posted by chewatadistance 17 April | 15:45
I reject the idea that an emotionally balanced, normally functioning individual would suddenly become a mass murderer without the influence of pre-existing negative factors.
We all have at least some "pre-existing negative factors". Who is to say how many of these factors have to be in place before someone takes the leap? Many people live and work in society with all of the factors you have listed and, not only do they not snap suddenly and commit acts of atrocity, they are considered to be more or less "normal" by the society they inhabit. Who is to say what normal is and isn't anyway? If you live in an area with low socio-economic factors at play, you could be exhibiting all sorts of anti-social behaviour and still be considered normal, but the same person in a different area would stand out with the same behaviour.

What I'm trying to say is that, while people don't actually flip instantly from a well-adjusted member of society to a psychopath, there may be no visible indicators that anything is wrong until that snap happens. To come back to my machine analogy, a critical part can have a flaw that could only be detected by destructive testing, so the flaw will never be found, but it can break without warning at any time or it can outlive the machine - either way, there is no way of knowing that the fault exists until the part fails. Until the particular chain of events happens to a person, we have no way of knowing they are broken inside, either. So, to all intents and purposes, a person who is seen as perfectly normal by the society they inhabit can become a psychopath without warning.
posted by dg 17 April | 18:40
And all I'm trying to say is we don't have to go on our vague feelings about it or on our individual conceptions of the human condition; a moment's Googling will show you how extensively violence has been studied and how much we do actually know about it. Quite a bit.

In addition, blaming violence on a random 'snapping' takes us off the hook for it as a society, when we know in fact that there are certain specific things that governments, social services, and individuals can do to reduce the risk factors for violence. Let's identify where the problem is likely to begin by looking at the patterns that recur with incredible frequency, and do something to address those problems at the source. Perhaps then there will be fewer people who are one misfired synapse away from going batshitinsane.
posted by Miko 17 April | 19:05
Oh, absolutely - we should do everything we can to identify and help those cases where the faults are apparent. I'm certainly not saying we (society) should absolve ourselves of blame for people who run off the rails by shrugging our shoulders and saying "well, shit happens, you know", because it is society itself that pushes its more fragile members over the edge, however inadvertently and, as a group, we have responsibility for every individual member of the group.

What I am saying is that some people will slip through the cracks and the first symptom that anything is wrong will be an apparently sudden snap. often these will manifest themselves in domestic violence, sometimes the various factors align in the worst possible way and result in a catastrophe like this one. I hate to think that it is all a matter of luck, but my mind keeps insisting that luck plays a dominant part in deciding the fate of us all. I don't like to think that way, but 45 years of evidence tells me it's true.
posted by dg 17 April | 19:19
Ah, then I agree, dg. The analyses I've been reading talk about how you really can't effectively predict a week before or a month before the event that someone's about to blow. In retrospect, the signs are there, but it's really hard to tell the difference between someone who's messed up and going through a hard time, but will eventually get it together, and someone who is really going to take the final, irrevocable step of creating an event they cannot undo. I do think there are a lot of points at which the course of an individual's life can be changed, with enough protective factors in place. But also that there's a lot we can do well before it gets that bad to make sure people don't slip that far through the cracks.
posted by Miko 17 April | 22:16
... there's a lot we can do well before it gets that bad to make sure people don't slip that far through the cracks.
Well, if you find a society that cares enough about its individual members to make this happen with any sort of regularity, let me know, because that's where I want to live.

I (and I know there are lots of others) have found myself at one point in my life realising that I am one trigger away from some sort of irrevocable act and, if not for the intervention of a person who happened to be in the right place at the right time (in my case, a virtual place), it would be highly unlikely that I would be here now. There are people all around us at any given time that are a hairsbreadth away from breaking and all it takes is one small event to push them either over the edge or back from the brink. Utopia for me would require that people care enough about each other sufficiently to make sure that things never get to this stage, but I don't live there, I live in reality where people break and bad things happen to them and others. I accept that and acknowledge that there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. We can only do our best to protect those we care about and hope for the best.
posted by dg 18 April | 17:46
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