Would Guns Have Prevented The Shooting?

[jetboatdeath]

I am not condemning the kids for not doing anything. I am just saying doing something is better than nothing. There is a story of one kid who heard the shots coming down the hall. He put up a barricade of two desks in front of the door preventing the shooter(I will not use his name he is getting far to much press the fame they get is a driving cause for it to happen again) from getting in. Every one in that room lived. To say the kids had no idea what was going on is untrue. Please don’t think I am berating them for not reacting it is easy to say what I would do. I have been shot at (war). These kids did not deserve this. I am mad, confused and in disbelief.

 

[exile]

Criminals pick weak targets.

But see, the problem in this case seems to have been—from the info that's now coming out—that the shooter wasn't a typical criminal. He appears to have been not just a sociopath, but possibly an out and out psychotic, in the grip of revenge fantasies (his creative writing teachers and classmates had actually been frightened by some of the stuff he'd turned in for class) and probably full-scale delusional at the point when he went up to campus with those 9mms. This wasn't a professional felon who was looking to score a fast holdup, but a walking time-bomb whose mind, in that great phrase of Jim Morrison's, was `squirming like a toad' at the point when he started shooting. With someone like that, there's no such thing as `deterrence'—he's no longer on the same planet as the rest of us...

 

[Ceicei]

This part caught my attention and I highlighted it:

Put into that situation, I think that a creating a refuge of saftey would be better than chasing after and trying to find the shooter. I think that barracading the door and waiting for help to arrive would be the better option...at least that way, if and when the authorities go in, you won't be mistaken for the shooter. If the opportunity to get away presents itself, then it should be taken.

It is my understanding that most people who are well trained with CCW (at least here in Utah), would not just go chasing after the shooter. They are not LEOs. If the shooter is nearby within the area, I can see how some with CCW may want to go check out the situation.

I am pretty sure the majority with permits are taught to leave the area whenever possible. If leaving is not possible or the lives of people are at stake, the CCW holders will protect themselves and others from where they are located.

However, states do vary with how extensive their training requirements are to obtain the CCW permits.

- Ceicei

 

[Carol]

A CCW holder prevented a shooting death at a bar in Manchester, NH last weekend.

http://www.unionleader.com/article....at+bar+leaves+one+wounded,+another+in+custody

 

[exile]

This part caught my attention and I highlighted it:



It is my understanding that most people who are well trained with CCW (at least here in Utah), would not just go chasing after the shooter. They are not LEOs. However, if the shooter is nearby within the area, I can see how some with CCW may want to go check out the situation.

I am pretty sure the majority with permits are taught to leave the area whenever possible. If leaving is not possible or the lives of people are at stake, the CCW holders will protect themselves and others from where they are located.

However, states do vary with how extensive their training requirements are to obtain the CCW permits.

- Ceicei

Excellent point, Ceicei—the usual position, as I understand it, is that you use your firearm as a `last resort' measure; since there may well be LEOs converging on a critical situation, the last thing you want to do is get in their way, especially in possession of a firearm—how do they know who you are? And as has been pointed out in prior posts, very few people have the training required for such a situation.

What's really at issue is what would have happened had some of the trapped students been armed. Grenadier in an earlier post gave the example of Charles Whitman, the `Texas Tower' mass murderer, who was held down by returning fire from people on campus while the police were able to get into a favorable position. The thing is... I can't really answer the poll question with any confidence. I just don't know whether it would have made a difference, and I have no confidence in any guess I would make. You'd think that, given how it played out, any other course of events had to have been better... but.... ???

 

[Lisa]

I was discussing this issue with some of the university students where I work and all of them were very shaken up by the whole issue.

I got me thinking.

Has anyone come forward and said that they wish they would have been able to have a firearm on campus (because they have a concealed permit already) and that they feel they could have stopped him from killing so many if they had been armed?

Up thread I made the comment that we will never really know if it would have made a difference and I am just curious if anyone has come forward upset by the fact that they weren't armed that day because of the campus rules.

 

[exile]

I am just curious if anyone has come forward upset by the fact that they weren't armed that day because of the campus rules.

Good question, Lisa.

What's been bothering me about all this is the fact that this guy underwent major psychiatric examinations a while back, and was pronounced a danger to himself—affectively abnormal, was the judgment. How could he have passed a background check in order to obtain firearms? The guy who sold him the guns insists that Cho did pass the background check— but is a major psychiatric history not a factor in such checks? Just on the clinical record, he sounds like someone you want to keep away from guns the way you want to keep matches and flammable materials out of the hands of a documented pyromaniac... does anyone know what happened here?

 

[KenpoTex]

Good question, Lisa.

What's been bothering me about all this is the fact that this guy underwent major psychiatric examinations a while back, and was pronounced a danger to himself—affectively abnormal, was the judgment. How could he have passed a background check in order to obtain firearms? The guy who sold him the guns insists that Cho did pass the background check— but is a major psychiatric history not a factor in such checks? Just on the clinical record, he sounds like someone you want to keep away from guns the way you want to keep matches and flammable materials out of the hands of a documented pyromaniac... does anyone know what happened here?

From what I've heard, he was never committed to a psychiatric institution, therefore (unfortunately) this information was not on his record for the background check to find. As I understand it, if the information was simply contained in clinical records, it would be covered by doctor-patient privilege (or whatever they call it). He would have had to have been involuntarily committed by a court for this information to surface.

like I said, just what I heard so take it FWIW.

 

[Monadnock]

A CCW holder prevented a shooting death at a bar in Manchester, NH last weekend.

http://www.unionleader.com/article....at+bar+leaves+one+wounded,+another+in+custody

My favorite ol' waterin' hole! Ahhh, the memories....

 

[INDYFIGHTER]

After watching the news last night I think the most important thing for us to do to stop this from happening again would be for NBC and all the other new agencies to stop talking about this guy. To stop giving him all the attention he knew he would get off this.

 

[Monadnock]

No, they wont stop. Not until they feel they've pushed their anti-gun agenda far enough.

 

[Grenadier]

From what I've heard, he was never committed to a psychiatric institution, therefore (unfortunately) this information was not on his record for the background check to find. As I understand it, if the information was simply contained in clinical records, it would be covered by doctor-patient privilege (or whatever they call it). He would have had to have been involuntarily committed by a court for this information to surface.

This tidbit from the news:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/0419200...la_de_krester__________post_correspondent.htm

http://crime.about.com/b/a/257385.htm

A Virginia district court found that Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui was "mentally ill" and was an "imminent danger to others," according to a 2005 temporary detention order.

Cho "is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as mental illness, or is seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment," reads the order, obtained by FOX News.

"But after the second complaint, the university obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away for psychiatric evaluation because an acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said."

That sounds like there was an order for involuntary treatment. If this is the case, then he was definitely adjudicated as "mentally defective," and the information should have been transferred to the FBI database, and this character should have been disqualified from making a 4473 purchase.

Here's a copy of the 4473 form. Under 12 f, you can see the question that is relevant.

http://www.atf.gov/forms/4473/index.htm

All in all, the gun shop owner did nothing wrong, followed the laws, and did things by the book.

 

[Ninjamom]

....got me thinking......Has anyone come forward and said that they wish they would have been able to have a firearm on campus (because they have a concealed permit already) and that they feel they could have stopped him from killing so many if they had been armed?

I saw a group shot on network news of six members of a VA Tech chapter of (can't remember which) either a shooting club or the NRA. In interviews with them, one of the students mentioned he had a permit, and would have felt safer and felt less a helpless victim if he could have been packing. This group was upset by the campus rules and thought CCW on campus would be part of the solution. However, as I think back on that brief interview, nowhere did the interviewee say he could have stopped/thwarted/limited the attack......he seemed more interested in being prepared to save himself. (Again, not trying to lay blame here, and 60-second sound bites will say whatever the interviewer wants them to say, but I think the difference between self-preservation/'feeling' of safety and the ability/willingness to step in and help others is critical in this context.)

After watching the news last night I think the most important thing for us to do to stop this from happening again would be for NBC and all the other new agencies to stop talking about this guy. To stop giving him all the attention he knew he would get off this.

Touche'

 

[exile]

From what I've heard, he was never committed to a psychiatric institution, therefore (unfortunately) this information was not on his record for the background check to find. As I understand it, if the information was simply contained in clinical records, it would be covered by doctor-patient privilege (or whatever they call it). He would have had to have been involuntarily committed by a court for this information to surface.

like I said, just what I heard so take it FWIW.

Hmmm... you're probably right, KT. Nothing else makes sense.

Thinking about this stuff, and the question that David Grossman's work raises about the willingness of even trained military personnel under serious fire (let alone students who may never have used a firearm except at a firing range)... I get the feeling that someone let the ball drop pretty badly. We would expect and hope that any student who was carrying would have reacted cooly and fired accurately... would have actually been able and willing to pull the trigger. But you don't want to put people in that situation in the first place, because of the kind of thing that DG documents in his book On Killing: even under fire, soldiers who haven't gone specific kinds of psychological training can't be counted on to return fire. Easier all round, I think, if someone who's got a clinical diagnosis as a potentially dangerous defective goes on some kind of red-level list that interacts somehow with the background check... you understand, I'm not talking about people who've been in therapy or have other kinds of problems; I mean, someone who has actually warranted the medical diagnosis `dangerous'... aka `inclined to violence'.

The very fact that we have to ask the questions Lisa has posed suggests that a huge number of mistakes were made in connection with this guy in several different places...

 

[Tez3]

I can understand the arguments to have/carry guns but what I have a hard time understanding is the emotional attachment that some people arguing for guns have. As I see it a gun is a tool, simliar perhaps to the fire extinguishers I have in my house. I check them regularly to make sure they are in working order and then forget about them until either the next check or heaven forbid, it's time to use them. I can understand gun collectors wanting to collect certain types of weapons the same as I do knives, swords etc but for the life of me I can't understand gun loving as practised by some members of American society, they boast having guns in every room to kill 'perps' that break in, they brandish their guns as if they were family members or children and speak of dying before giving up the right to bear arms. Perhaps the atittude practised by LEOs towards their weapons would be a healthier view? When did guns become a love affair as opposed to a tool for protection?

 

[Monadnock]

I can understand the arguments to have/carry guns but what I have a hard time understanding is the emotional attachment that some people arguing for guns have. As I see it a gun is a tool, simliar perhaps to the fire extinguishers I have in my house. I check them regularly to make sure they are in working order and then forget about them until either the next check or heaven forbid, it's time to use them. I can understand gun collectors wanting to collect certain types of weapons the same as I do knives, swords etc but for the life of me I can't understand gun loving as practised by some members of American society, they boast having guns in every room to kill 'perps' that break in, they brandish their guns as if they were family members or children and speak of dying before giving up the right to bear arms. Perhaps the atittude practised by LEOs towards their weapons would be a healthier view? When did guns become a love affair as opposed to a tool for protection?

I find that view a bit on the line of fantastical, as I have never met a responsible gun owner who does such things. Perceptions of American gun culture shouldn't be taken from Movies, internet, or the nightly news. Between gun enthusiasts, there is certainly talk of the subject, but you just do not see people waving the things around in front of people who don't own them.

I guess I'm asking, where have you seen this?

 

[Blindside]

I find that view a bit on the line of fantastical, as I have never met a responsible gun owner who does such things. Perceptions of American gun culture shouldn't be taken from Movies, internet, or the nightly news. Between gun enthusiasts, there is certainly talk of the subject, but you just do not see people waving the things around in front of people who don't own them.

I guess I'm asking, where have you seen this?

I've seen it, check out your average gun forum or to get really wacky try a survivalist forum. Online discussion forums do not represent the average gun user/martial artist/stamp collector, usually those on them are a bit more obsessive than the average bear.

As for people who "speak of dying before giving up their right to bear arms," this is an issue about what people view as part of their inalienable rights. Something that has been codified into our Constitution and something that many people view as quite literally sacred.

Lamont

 

[Carol]

The unnecessary brandishing of a firearm is a felony criminal offense in the US.

Concealed means concealed - no one should know you carry.

 

[Tez3]

I find that view a bit on the line of fantastical, as I have never met a responsible gun owner who does such things. Perceptions of American gun culture shouldn't be taken from Movies, internet, or the nightly news. Between gun enthusiasts, there is certainly talk of the subject, but you just do not see people waving the things around in front of people who don't own them.

I guess I'm asking, where have you seen this?

I accept that the media will always pick on the most 'novel' or interesting things to report on but I have seen documentaries (one from Louis Theroux) from reputab;e film makers on the gun culture in America. I rarely see American news coverage not having satellite tv. The sight of Charlton Heston proclaiming that his gun would only be taken from his cold dead hand was pretty melodramatic and points more to a love affair with his guns than lobbying to be able to keep a tool. A reasoned argument would have come across far better .. and understandable to non gun owners.

 

[Monadnock]

I accept that the media will always pick on the most 'novel' or interesting things to report on but I have seen documentaries (one from Louis Theroux) from reputab;e film makers on the gun culture in America. I rarely see American news coverage not having satellite tv. The sight of Charlton Heston proclaiming that his gun would only be taken from his cold dead hand was pretty melodramatic and points more to a love affair with his guns than lobbying to be able to keep a tool. A reasoned argument would have come across far better .. and understandable to non gun owners.

Melodramatic, I agree. That little catch phrase has been around a lot longer than Charton was with the NRA. I think it points more to a love affair with freedom than the gun. As for an agruement, he wasn't in a debate environment as far as I recall. So you have to take it with a grain of salt.