Randy Cassingham's Blog

So he shot 32 people, one after one. There's only one way he could do that: they didn't have the ability to defend themselves. It sounds good to make schools "gun free zones" but all that means is a gunman knows no one can shoot back, so that's a good place to practice mayhem.

We had a shooting in this state (you may have heard of the Luby's cafeteria shooting?) where a lot of people were shot. That's when we passed a law to allow honest, law-abiding citizens to carry guns after a background check and safety training. And guess what? No more mass shootings -- gunmen know there COULD BE someone who can shoot back.

Heinlein was right: an armed society is a polite society. How many more school shootings do we need until we allow people to defend themselves everywhere? We're sacrificing our children to the altar of political correctness, the idea that if we take away guns that violence will suddenly go away. It doesn't happen, folks. If we allowed honest people to have guns, we wouldn't be mourning 32 innocent lives tonight.

Well, if someone would have had a gun, maybe a lot more people would be alive today.

I carry a gun, but would I be allowed to carry it there? No, I don't think so. Don't all the people that were killed wish I were there, with my gun?

---

Wow: you can get gun permits in Washington? (Texas was no surprise....) -rc

As a gun owner living in Va. I can tell you there have been numerous attacks on various campuses the last couple of years including Tech. Usually robberies and rapes but quite often deadly assualts. The Va Citizens Defense League, which is a Va. gun owners organization, tried to get legislation passed allowing students who had a concealed carry permit to be allowed to carry their weapon while in class without fear of explusion for self protection. The various schools all opposed it including Tech a school which said their campus is totally safe. The legislation died in the State assembly.

Texas is right -- we have set up shooting galleries for killers. It is also nice to see a Heinlein quote. Heinlein had the ultimate answers on how to run society. To quote Heinlein again we are living in the "crazy years".

Possibly, in this one instance, having armed students might have cut the body count down. Of course, how many other students might have been shot in the crossfire as everyone blazed away at each other will never be known.

I'm also quite nervous about having armed students on a college campus. Anyone remember college? Students are nervous (or panicking) over grades; they are depressed because of girlfriends dumping them (or failing a class); they get drunk or drugged out while partying, etc etc etc. Not the most mature of people.

Sure, we might have reduced the number of slain today...but how many more would die throughout the year as a student snaps and blows away a snoring roommate, or shoots his ex-girlfriend, or commits suicide? I'm not sure if adding more guns to the mix would make us safer over all.

Unfortunately for me, this shooting brings up bad memories from November 1, 1991 at the U of Iowa. A Chinese exchange PhD student did not win a prestigious award for physics and went on a two build rampage at my school. He killed 3 Physics professors, the student who did win the award, the VP of academics and her poor work study student who was the only survivor of what people in Iowa call the Gang Lu Massacre.

I had call in the physics building that day - but a couple of hours earlier and was in the library studying when it happened. When I got back to my dorm to go out (as it was a friday) there were five calls from my Dad demanding I call him right way when I got home. So I call and ask what was so important - his reply -O thank God. Turn on the news. I stil cant believe that to this day five people were killed, a young girl working work study was paralyzed from the neck down and this crazed guy died - all over some stupid physics pirze that he thought should be his.

The people he killed were Christoph K. Goertz (his advisor), Linhua Shan (a fellow PhD student from China), Dwight R. Nicholson (department chair), Robert Alan Smith (associate professor and Lu's co-advisor), and T. Anne Cleary (Vice President for Academic Affairs). A student employee, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, was shot in her spine; this permanently paralyzed her arms and legs.

It makes me sad that still haven't figured out in all this time how to protect college kids from these sorts of crazed gunman. A campus wide alert or something - at least the VT kids got that email - unfortuately it was too late to help them.

This was an attack by a psychopath against what he sees as a uniform society, intended to hurt us by killing our kids. I attended VPI over 30 years ago and bullying wasn't tolerated by the students, not because someone policed them, but because it just wasn't a part of their campus culture. If there is an underlying reason why Tech was targeted it was because there is NO justification, any more than any other terrorist would have in bombing a nursery school.

If Randy had bothered to judge the subset of the student population interviewed on the basis of their composure and reason he would have recognized this. Exploiting this tragedy to score points in some pro-this or anti-that debate is despicable.

---

I find it interesting that you know the specific motives of this guy. Have you taken this vital information to the police? Or are you engaging in speculation that's even more banal than what CNN was doing today?

As for me, I've already said "I have no idea if that's part of what went on in Virginia." Too bad you're not as honest, preferring to use this tragedy to make your own pro-this and anti-that points. Mr. Pot, your attempts to call the kettle black ring a bit hollow. -rc

Studies have shown that the people with CCW licenses are the most law abiding people in the country. No one has a reason to fear such people. If just one student, over 21 (as that is the law to carry a gun), had a concealed gun in the classroom, there could have been a lot less blood shed.

With regards to the constant shootout with more guns, one should do some research before doubting the safety. Read John Lott's books. Read the studies where crime has decreased in states that have CCW permits. It's an awesome responsibility to carry a gun. I don't know anyone who has a permit that doesn't view it as such. The wild west theory has been disproved many years ago.

Banning guns does not work. Ask the folks in Washington, DC and Chicago where they have the strictest gun laws in the country.....and to go with it, the highest crime rates. Criminals love "gun-free" zones.

Just the presence of a gun stops hundreds of assaults every year. And the knowledge that someone MIGHT have a gun makes criminals think twice. Several years ago the Florida legislature passed two seemingly unrelated acts - "shall issue" legislation requiring the authorities to issue concealed weapons permits to any law-abiding citizen who applied for one AND a requirement for special license plates on rental cars. Criminals starting haunting rest stops, attacking people in rental cars. Anyone driving a rental was most likely a tourist and was unlikely to be armed.

It took about six months and several deaths of tourists before they saw the connection and resumed issuing standard license plates for rental cars.

What happened to Virginia? When I used to spend time there in the early 70's if someone was foolish enough to pull out a gun to commit a crime so would everybody else to make them stop.

Shooting galleries. Good choice of words. The bad part is it's the schools indoctrinating the students with the horror of holding a handgun.

As far as the number of people that would be killed by armed students under pressure.... We have several armed cities throughout Iraq and Afghanistan with pressures a student couldn't imagine. We do not have random shootings.

The guy did do some planning. Evidently he chained the exit(s?). So in response to the more gun control crowd I'd like to say I.E.D. If this guy didn't have guns he could have easily walked into his Mega-Mart and bought all he needed and quite possibly killed even more.

To Larry in Indiana. Do you really think if some students had been armed it's realistic to consider more than 33 students could have died? Really? I suggest you do some reading up on the State of Florida and firearms. You'll find the regulations very lax there for over a decade. You'll find a drop in violent crime there. You'll also find very few people actually decide to carry and the record of those who obtain permits and then engage in a violent crime is almost nil.

Finally take note of this unfortunate point. The Campus Police arrived too late to make a difference in the first shooting. Then City Police arrived at the scene. While both were on campus grounds they still arrived too late to make any difference at the second scene of executions. No fault of the Police should be inferred. They most often just don't make it there in time.