Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by John, Michigan on April 21, 2007:

In your editorial you spoke of schools teaching us to not respond, "If the bully beats you, trips you up, steals your lunch money and YOU get suspended"

Been going on a long time. I don't fight by the rules so I lucked out but even as far back as the 1960's the rule for school yard fights was this: Bully hits you, NOBODY sees it happen (save you, and his gang).

But they hear it and sense FIGHT, so they all turn toward you just as you hit back. Result: Yours was the first blow seen and yours is the suspension.

I cheated. They lowered their head, charged like enraged bulls and when they got to where I was. I'd moved, thus they did not hit me, nor I them. nd though they DID hit the brick wall behind me. It did not feel the need to hit back. And neither did I.

As for the bullies, they also retired from the fight.

---

Yes, I do understand that this has been going on for many, many years. The problem is, it's no longer just a de facto, playground rule; now, it's becoming institutionalized as an actual rule, codified into law. The former is pathetic; the latter is unconsciable. -rc

Posted by Phil, Maryland on April 22, 2007:

The Virginia Tech tragedy will be compounded if we learn nothing from this situation. From all accounts so far, the gunman had lifelong emotional and mental health issues. As he progressed through school, he was teased and shunned for being different, but rarely was he helped. He was unpredictable, and grew more so in the last few years. He was not competent to seek treatment, but not imminently dangerous enough to warrant forced intervention more than once.

Despite all of the warning signs and all of the efforts on the part of Virginia Tech, it seems that there was nothing anyone could do to him or for him until he exploded. The laws are in place to protect individual rights, but at what cost? We need to evaluate our ability to prevent crime when the warning signs of mental illness are present.

A more personal note: I'm an alumnus of Virginia Tech, and went to visit yesterday, 4/22. There are many memorials on campus, including a ring of 33 stones on the drill field, which includes one for Seung Hui Cho, the gunman. The Virginia Tech community has chosen to include him among the lives lost. The students have grieved, have found some understanding, and are ready to get back to their normal lives, however changed. These kids, in the aftermath of this tragedy, showed support for the Virginia Tech administration, for each other, for the wounded and for the families of the victims, including the gunman's. I hope that the world follows their lead.

Posted by Udo, California on April 22, 2007:

I agree that CNN (and most all other media outlets) spent an inordinate amount of time on the shooting story. I mean, there's other things going on in the country and in the world, and these should not be preempted by repeat comments, photos, and interviews of witnesses etc. of the massacre. Such repetitions only go to inure the viewer to the horror of the crime, and to risk boring the audience to death.

Not that the media need to move away from the topic altogether, but if they can't bring us something new, they need to move on to other things. A daily half-hour retrospective in the late evening should suffice for those not able to watch during the working day.

Posted by Guy, Arizona on April 22, 2007:

I'm 63 years old, retired from the military after 20 years service with a one year tour of duty in Viet Nam.

This past week I was sitting in a local veteran's club watching a TV news channel that was trying to explain the events at Virgina Tech, and, mostly, give excuses for why it happened. Several of my fellow vets and I were making comments about what could have prevented the tragedy, when one man said that all college and university faculty should be required to carry a gun in the classroom. Several of the responses suggested that most teachers in these institutions were probably so liberal that they would refuse to comply, including mine.

My own feelings on the cause and effect: When I was in school, from elementary through high school, almsot every teacher had a "board of education" and was allowed, even encouraged to use it when students were unruly or disrespectful. I admit, I was the recipient of that lesson on more than one occasion, and if my parents were notified, the lesson was repeated when I got home. Teachers, and even parents are not allowed to apply corporal punishment to those that misbehave, at school or home.

With the help of mental health field, we all, from children to adults, are not required to accept personal responsibility for actions; ergo, no one feels bad when they do something that is socially destructive, from cheating on a school exam to gunning down dozens of victims to making, placing and detinating a bomb killing hundreds of innocent victims.

Posted by Mike (Burke, VA) on April 22, 2007:

I, too, am a former military man, a Viet Nam Era Vet (but not a "damaged" one, I think). I have made the point to many, since the incident at VT (and even at Columbine, though the difference between deliberately allowing HS kids to carry guns to school, and College students to do the same probably doesn't bear much discussion), that if one student in the room had been armed, and prepared to defend him/herself and others, there would STILL have been at least one or two dead students, but NOT the 33 that we have today.

Similarly, it was pointed out to me today by a friend, retired from the FBI, that if the Dorm Supervisor had been armed, it all would have ended not long after 7:00 a.m., and the dorm supe, and all the later students, would still be alive. Not necessarily so in any case, since a miss in the heat of the moment might a) have allowed the gunmen to finish the job anyway, or b) have hit someone else. But I would, had I been there and not carrying my .45, rather had either of those chances, with the chance of survival, than what the 32 innocents got.

Posted by Jerry (Corvallis, Oregon) on April 22, 2007:

Cho was nutters. He was misdiagnosed as a 'danger to himself' but not a 'danger to others'. That's how he was able to buy a firearm. In hindsight, we know that he should never have been allowed to be allowed to run around loose, let along buy a firearm.

Given that, there is nothing in current law that would have prevented him from committing this massacre.

At this point, the only thing that would have stopped him is if someone on the scene had the same power which he had; the power to shoot a mad dog in the street. Or, in this case, within a 'gun free zone'.

We all understand that laws of prevention can only stop the intrinsically law-abiding, and the laws don't stop this kind of atrocity because the law-abiding don't DO this kind of stuff.

The police will never respond in time to prevent it, for a variety of reasons. The only safeguard left is for us, the law-abiding, to demand the power to defend ourselves. The Constitution has already acknowledged that this is a right; it isn't something that can be 'given to us' because it has already (constitutionally) been "given to us by God."

And as long as the states are willing to enact 'feel-good' legislation for the sole purpose of acquiring political 'style points', we are at the combined mercies of politicians and maniacs.

But I repeat myself.

Posted by Ken, Falls Church, VA on April 23, 2007:

A simplistic focus on more guns misses the more interesting questions raised by young adults cowering under their desks as they submit to their fates. The instances of bravery and sacrifice at "Tech" were severely limited to a 76-year-old holocaust survivor and a couple students. And this at a school with a century-long history as a military academy.

I don't know the demographics of bravery, the expected hero-percentage in the population. Maybe three is the right number in this case. Obviously, it was too few.

Courage is the pre-requisite to action, not a piece in your pocket. We surely need to grow the population of brave citizens among our intellectual elite.

I don't pretent to know the means to achieve bravery, but approaching the question from this direction avoids the general instransigence surrounding discussion of guns.

Posted by Ken, SC on April 23, 2007:

Why are we surprised that people get killed in an area where EVERYONE knows guns are not allowed?

Count the number of school shootings and then check the number of shootings in places where people MIGHT be carring guns. We make a slaughterhouse available for anyone to kill in and then act surprised when somebody does just that.

Any teacher or adult student with a gun MIGHT have stopped the killings at anytime. They then would have been arrested for having a gun on school grounds.

We cannot change the fact that crazy people will do crazy things, but we can change the fact that innocent people should NOT have to die, when they do.

Concealed carry of handguns works, if done properly and legally.

Posted by Garret Kim, Texas on April 23, 2007:

Hmmm, a difficult question, yes? How to prevent mass murders? But it is so easy, no? Prevent them exactly the same way you prevent individual murders. Pass a law. Pass more laws. Make the punishments even more severe. Adopt Zero Tolerance stances.

That'll show 'em. This sort of thing absolutely will not be tolerated! The Third Reich shall last a thousand years!!! Wait, been there, done that, didn't work.

Very interesting thing, an odd concept of freedom and ability to make individual choices. It also includes the ability to commit crimes. I'm very certain that there have been dozens of authoritarian regimes in history where street crime was virtually unknown, but for some weird reason, those regimes didn't seem to last.

Posted by Wight13, Alabama on April 23, 2007:

I like the "primitive with a rock" analogy so I thought I'd expound upon it a bit.

I think even the gun control advocates would agree that it should be everyone's right to defend themselves from violent aggression when it occurs. There are already laws against violent aggressions but when it occurs merely apprehending the culprit and rehabilitating them is not enough. Prevention of an immediate and eminent threat is definitely more desirable than vigils and memorials?

Back to the primitives and rocks... A physically aggressive primitive threatens me and is likely, due to the fact that he is larger and stronger than me, to be able to successfully follow though with that threat. For me, at this very moment, society's enforcing authorities' ability to apprehend this man and rehabilitate him after he's successfully carried through with his threat is a moot point. I opt for prevention and pick up a rock and hurl it at his head, thus stopping the attack before it began. It's a revolutionary idea, because it equalizes the natural size and strength advantage the criminal learned he could exercise against smaller individuals such as myself.

Of course he gets the idea and realizes that he can pick up a rock and use it in the same fashion, but my rocks hurt him just about as much as his hurt me so the equality is established. His ability to victimize others is greatly diminished by the equalizing factors of projectile weapons used in self defense. But society views this new application of rocks as projectile weapons as dangerous and outlaws their use declaring certain areas to be "rock free" zones. In here they say, you cannot carry a rock because it makes the place unsafe as anyone can get mad and throw rocks at anyone else. Inside this safety zone they have taken away the law abiding citizens' ability and right to defend themselves.

Then one day a undiagnosed homicidal primitive chains us all in and proceeds to kill 32 of us with in an environment which guarantees that he can do so safe from any preventative measures since the governing body took away our ability to defend ourselves and failed to take up its responsibility to do so.

I don't know if I'll get any support from Randy on this one but I'm thinking that there should be some legal liability for an institution that denies you the ability to defend yourself but fails to adequately provide the defense it has denied you for yourself. VT turned those people into victims just as our society is turning us all into victims by perpetuating the myth that we have no right to defend ourselves.

---

You don't need my support. The idea behind TRUE in general, and this blog, is to stimulate thought and discussion. You did that, so mission accomplished whether others agree with you or not.

Interestingly, your starting premise -- I think even the gun control advocates would agree that it should be everyone's right to defend themselves from violent aggression -- is a problem for many people. Not everyone agrees with that. And to be sure, I have no problem with them deciding they won't fight back. But I have a huge problem with them deciding you can't, or I can't. And many of them think they should have the right to make such decisions. -rc