3 killed in University of Alabama shooting

[pneutin]

http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-shooting-uahuntsville-021210,0,1970809.story

HUNTSVILLE, AL - Three people were killed today at UAHuntsville, and three others were wounded in a shooting that happened just before 4pm. The shooting happened inside the Shelby Center.

Of the three people rushed to Huntsville Hospital, two are in critical condition and one is stabilized, according to Huntsville Hospital Spokesperson Burr Ingram.

Multiple sources confirm the shooting happened during a UAHuntsville Biology Department faculty meeting. We have learned the suspect, a woman, was denied tenure this morning and then went to the faculty meeting and allegedly opened fire.



Sad to see that 3 people had to pay the price for misguided zero tolerance policies.

[Tunkamerica]

1. ?

[Warpy]

2. Yeah, get more guns out there into the hands of unstable losers!

That'll cut down on the carnage, sure enough!

[pneutin]

8. You'll never reduce the amount of guns or unstable losers to zero

So how about not making innocent people defenseless?

[Walk away]

11. So the more guns everywhere/the safer it is for everyone?

How do all of these people with guns know who to shoot? Students down and what?...one hundred guns drawn? Do they just all start shooting at the person they think is the killer? Will someone shoot them when they see them shoot a woman?

Death school for everyone I guess. I feel sorry for the police in a situation like that. No wonder most Police Officers are pro-gun control.

[PavePusher]

16. Freedom of Choice.

It's an American thing, maybe you don't understand...

[sharesunited]

20. Innocent victims of bullets entering their bodies don't get a choice.

[pneutin]

30. You're absolutely right, they didn't have a choice...

...because the school forbid them to possess a weapon on campus. That didn't stop the crazy woman though did it? How about giving those innocent victims a choice?

[sharesunited]

33. Arm them all and see who shoots whom faster.

OK I have you down for that.

[pneutin]

44. No one suggested arming everyone except for you

and another poster named "Walk away". How about giving people a choice?

[sharesunited]

48. Personal lethality is not so much a choice as it is a warning sign.

[rd_kent]

50. You do realize that statements like this are not coherent, right?

[aliendroid]

70. only problem is

That this argument is done over and over again and we have armed up a lot of people and violent crime has gone down. So arming them up will not increase murder rates.

[gorfle]

80. YOU ARE DAMN STRAIGHT.

Arm them all, hell just ARM ME and see who shoots whom faster.

I want a chance to survive. I want a chance to defend myself against the Dr. Amy Bishops and Seung-Hui Cho's of the world.

Is there a chance that CCW permit holders will shoot the wrong people? Sure. But statistically, they have been shown to cause less collateral damage than police do.

I just want a fucking chance. I'm tired of being helpless in the face of violent lunatics seeking easy prey.

[aliendroid]

120. It's a breath of fresh are to...

"But statistically, they have been shown to cause less collateral damage than police do."

see that this fact is getting out there. That is true. Police have found that citizens with guns are much more effective at shooting the badguy and only the badguy. I think it has to do with the fact that people who are good at shooting tend to keep up the sport which tends to evolve into getting a CCW. While police think of being an officer as a job and shooting at the range is a job and many of them didn't have the natural ability to shoot to begin with. So I think having 5% of the best shooters in society out there protecting everyone is a lot safer than having more cops who can't shoot worth the crap.

[rd_kent]

49. What a joke.

[gorfle]

79. That's right. They had NO CHOICE.

The innocent people shot dead at my school today had no choice. No possibility of resistance. They were at the complete mercy of a deranged, disgruntled employee who decided not only to ignore the rules concerning firearms but the laws against murder.

Her victims did not have a choice, nor a chance.

[Indy Lurker]

19. RE:How do all of these people with guns know who to shoot?

It simple.

You shoot the person who is about inflict great bodily harm or death in a criminal manner.

If you cannot positively identify that person, you may not shoot.

[Walk away]

31. Wow! You have a lot of faith in 100 folks with guns in that situation.

If they saw you shoot that woman but didn;t see her shoot anyone.....how many do you think would put a bullet through your brain?

I'm guessing at least 10. You would certainly be a dead man.

[pneutin]

32. So far with all the CCW permits issued in this country, that scenario has never happened

Not even once

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pneutin]

46. CCW permits are allowed in several schools across the country

I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, but I remember that the state of Utah distinctly allows it.
So far, all the mass gun murders occurred in gun free zones.
I'm not a republican.

[Euromutt]

84. For a real-world example, see the Appalachian School of Law, 2002

When the shooting started, two students, Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, separately from and unbeknownst to each other, ran to their respective vehicles, retrieved personally owned firearms, and went looking for the shooter. They both managed to locate and correctly identify the shooter, despite coming from different directions and being unaware of each other.

Now you may point out that Bridges and Gross were both law enforcement officers, which is true. However, their respective agencies are over 340 miles, almost six hours' drive, apart, so it's implausible they knew each other professionally. Moreover, even now, law enforcement is far from perfecting procedures for dealing with "active shooters," and between 2002 and now, police doctrine has been drastically revised on more than one occasion after it was correctly decided "we could have handled that better." Virginia Tech and Binghamton were two examples. In other words, you can't even argue "Bridges and Gross were cops, so they knew what they were supposed to do," and in fact, what they both did ran entirely counter to the standard procedures of the day.

[SteveM]

93. You would have to guess. Since you haven't seen this, have you? nt

[Euromutt]

81. "Most police officers are pro-gun control"? Where do you get that idea?

A fair number of police chiefs are pro-gun control, be it of their own volition or because the politicians with the power to hire and fire them tell them to be, but to the best of my understanding, a substantial number of rank and file law enforcement officers are in favor of private citizens being able to defend themselves against violent crime. Cops who have the "to protect and serve" mentality acknowledge that they can't be everywhere, and can't prevent every crime from happening or be present to intervene, and all other things being equal, they want to see the citizen make it through with as little injury as possible. And firearms are, very simply, the most reliable means of incapacitating an assailant that technology has been able to produce thus far, which is why cops themselves continue to use firearms in spite of the increasingly large panoply of "less lethal" weaponry they carry these days.

[aikoaiko]

89. Some states allow carrying a concealed gun w.permit on campus & we don't see your fears occuring

Generally, people who carry a conceal weapon with a state sanctioned permit do not use their guns in violence, and in the situations where they did use a gun in violence it usually had nothing to do with carrying it concealed.

I sort of understand you Walk away. I grew up in NJ and understand the massive anti-gun culture that exists in much (but not all of the state). After living in other places like AZ, NH, and GA, I came to experience people who didn't fear guns in the hands of regular folks and where keeping and bearing arms was a duty and responsibility. Its a different world out there beyond Delaware Water Gap.

[SteveM]

90. "More guns everywhere:" the habinger of defeat for the controllers...

This is the relatively "new" one-liner from gun-controllers: Add the controller's greatest fear (that somehow everyone around him/her is carrying), to a complete untruth (no one advocates "guns everywhere"), and posit that this is the only alternative to their prohibitionist policies. Makes sense. After all, the whole gun-control movement was based on racism (since before the Revolution) and self-acknowledged lies; why stop now? Fear and extremism worked with the GOP-founded and led Brady Bunch, shouldn't it work with gun-control?

[SteveM]

92. "one hundred guns drawn:" have you ever seen that, except on T.V.? nt

[Callisto32]

117. Any proof of that statement about most police?

[cowman]

121. Thats utter

nonsense that most Police Officers are pro gun control. Thats just crap the VPC and the Brady Bunch have been putting out for years. Most street cops are favorable towards citizens being able to carry concealed as long as they take a safety course and go through a background check. Nice try but does not hold water

[marybourg]

13. When there were stricter gun laws the # of mass shootings in

public places was essentially zero and within my lifetime and memory.

[Walk away]

18. Show your stats and prove their source. Otherwise your post means nothing. n/t

[marybourg]

58. I've been unable to find even one instance of mass shooting

in the U.S in the 40's and 50's (the era of my youth). Statistics on this behavior appears to have only been collected after the behavior started, that is in the mid 60's.

[PavePusher]

61. Oh, the start of mass-media-as-entertainment.

And everyone pointing cameras into everyone elses bedrooms.

But more/faster/furthar reaching communications probably had nothing to do with it.... :sarcasm:

[marybourg]

65. We did have newspapers (5 to 7 in the city I lived in) in those

ancient days and they did compete fiercely for stories. See, e.g. "yellow journalism".

[PavePusher]

66. Yes, but the volume and speed of information transfer...

was much lower. A hot news story in Maine might take several days or weeks to get to Los Angeles. Now, it will make CNN in 30 minutes or less....

[aliendroid]

71. shootings are a societal problem

The problem is not the gun, it's the shooter. Many people on the left teach their children to disrespect firearms and fail to teach them the code of conduct with firearms. The mass shooting problem will continue as long as the ignorance about firearms continues and as long as the gun free zones continue. This woman sounds like she was killing two birds with one stone, she was getting revenge and also martyring herself for the sake of building up anti-gun anecdotal stories that will fade away and be forgotten while we will all remember the fantastic reduction in crime and the thousands of lives saved by the availability of concealed carry permits and other pro gun legislation. Next is to do nation wide conceal carry on campus so these cowards who never learned to respect firearms will no longer consider the school to be a good place to open fire.

[X_Digger]

82. 1937, 1940, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_murderers_and_spree_killers_by_number_of_victims:_Killing_sprees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_murderers_and_spree_killers_by_number_of_victims:_Mass_murders

[Walk away]

91. And you believe this is because there lax gun laws in the 50s and 40s?

That is the theory you are peddling? And then when gun control began it caused people to go out and shoot each other? Are you seriously proposing that people go crazy and go on shooting sprees because they think no one will stop them and this is why they didn't do it before?

Unbelievable. And really sad.

[SteveM]

95. You may wish to consider pogroms/race riots...

there were many pogrom-type race riots during the early 20th Century (not to be confused with lynchings) in which armed gangs (nearly always white) "invaded" the black quarters of different towns and had at them, with guns and other "instruments." SEE: Tulsa, Chicago, Atlanta, Rosewood, Fl. for starters. If these aren't "mass shootings" then grits ain't groceries...

According to Arthur Waskow (From Race Riot to Sit-in), the last true race riot was in Jacksonville, FL in 1960.

[X_Digger]

40. You must be very young or have a bad memory..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_murderers_and_spree_killers_by_number_of_victims

[marybourg]

63. Actually I'm old and my post refers to my memories of the 40's

and 50's, long before the first instance of mass shooting shown on the chart you refer to. Although there were some instances of men shooting their families and themselves in despair during the Depression, I've not found an instance of mass shootings in the U.S. during the relatively gun-free decades of the 40's and 50's.

[SteveM]

97. "Relatively gun-free decades of the 40's and 50's"? Hardly...

Perhaps you mean less violence-prone, but not "relatively gun-free."

Unfortunately, the mall massacres and school yard spectaculars are as much driven by style as by the screwed-up mentalities of the killers. Maybe it's the vision of seeing yourself as some kind of suburban ninja, or just seeing yourself on T.V., coast-to-coast. And there is always "revenge" inflicted on any number of enemies, real or imagined. There has always been a lot of guns in the hands of American civilians. That doesn't seem to have much effect on the changing ways of killing.

[rd_kent]

51. Please provide evidence to support that claim, otherwise you are just blowing smoke.

[marybourg]

64. In this case, lack of evidence appears to be evidence of lack. nt.

[Katya Mullethov]

96. Lack of Google-Fu ?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=list+of+spree+killers+

[Euromutt]

85. I don't think there were stricter gun laws in the 1940s and 1950s.

The bulk of federal firearms law is no older than 1968, with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, and the Gun Control Act both adopted that year. Prior to that, you could buy guns in another than that of your residence, buy them via mail order, you name it.

[Katya Mullethov]

106. Aaaaaaah the way Glenn Miller played

Those were the days .


I noticed that the state of Tx acted to prohibit gunracks some years AFTER everyone had already given up on them . They gave up on them because the number of dirtbags that would smash out the glass and steal your rifle had reached the "tipping point" .


Lots and lots of things started going South thereafter . It isnt guns , it was and is the proliferation of dirtbags .

[beevul]

109. Uh...when in our history was that?

When have there EVER been substantially stricter gun laws than what we have currently?

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

72. Deleted message

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[Mike K]

21. Please don't infer this to be a smartass response -

- but specifically how would you recommend that guns be kept out of the hands of those who really want them?

There are laws in place which operate to discourage known unstable and criminally inclined persons from getting caught with a gun, but all anyone who is determined to get a gun needs to bypass those bureaucratic safeguards is a few hundred dollars and a very easy to find "connection:" Anyone who sells hard drugs, such as the average street-corner crack hawker, either sells guns, too, or knows someone who does, because illegal guns travel through the same smuggling channels as do illegal drugs.

As far as guns in the U.S. are concerned the toothpaste is out of the tube and making more laws will serve no purpose other than to disarm the peaceful, law-abiding citizen. Because those who have illegal guns are not about to give them up and will ignore any and all gun laws.

Also, there are millions of unregistered guns in the hands of decent, peaceful people. If rigid laws are passed against getting caught with an unregistered gun, many if not most of these people will dispose of those unregistered pieces by dumping them onto the underground market. An old beat up .38 revolver that isn't worth fifty bucks in the legal market can bring as much as five hundred underground.

Lastly, the escalated War on Drugs has been going on since 1982 and it has gotten more oppressive and costly year after year. Yet drugs are no less available today than they were back then. They are in fact even more available. So prohibitions, whether against drugs, guns or prostitution, serve no other interests than those of the law enforcement community and the corrupt politicians who are bribed to maintain the incredibly profitable status quo.

[stray cat]

28. Those Harvard educated biologists are all so unstable or do you mean just the female ones?

:shrug:

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

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[SteveM]

88. Cat crept into crypt, crapped, crept out again. nt

[depakid]

3. "...misguided zero tolerance policies?"

Not sure whether this merits a

:shrug:

or a

:rofl:

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[pneutin]

7. Zero tolerance = school forbids possession of any weapon on campus

A lot of good that did. :shrug:

[baldguy]

14. It did. Only three are dead rather than 20.

If gun violence is a problem - and most rational people agree that it is - adding guns is no solution.

[PavePusher]

17. Self-defense is not a solution?

Please, enlighten me...

[baldguy]

22. I'm sure the suspect thought he was defending himself.

[PavePusher]

25. Aa-a-a-n-n-d........

fail.

Please read the article again.

[baldguy]

34. He was being threatened; his gun gave him the right to end the lives of the people threatening him.

That's self-defense, even if - especially if - you don't agree with it.

[pneutin]

39. Why do you keep saying "he"? Did you read the article?

Not that it matters what the perpetrator's gender was, but it was a woman who was disgruntled after being denied tenure. She came back in the afternoon and shot 3 people at a faculty meeting.

[friendly_iconoclast]

42. *Still* failing- Do try and read the article linked in the OP, mmkay?

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

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[PavePusher]

59. Ummm...

What part of "fail" did you not comprehend?

[baldguy]

76. The gun grants the right to kill.

Not the law, not God, not from a misguided sense of fear or ignorance. The right doesn't come from a supposed physical, mental or moral threat. It originates & resides only in the gun and the possession of it.

The shooter realized this and took it upon herself to act on that right.

[PavePusher]

83. Ah, we've seen this syndrome before.

Animism, where-in we ascribe mystical powers to inanimate objects.

Yawn.....

[SteveM]

100. You and Gandhi would not have gotten along...

The Mahatma knew a threat when he saw it, and always advocated self-defense.

You seem content with defining self-defense into oblivion (worse, from the standpoint of the murderer). That is vulgar passivism.

[Name removed]

86. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

87. Deleted message

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[Euromutt]

108. What "basic truth" is that?

The one that consists entirely of conjecture on your part, utterly unrelated to the known facts of this incident? The "minor error" is emblematic of your understanding of this case; to wit, the fact that you didn't even notice that the shooter was a woman is a very strong indication that you didn't bother to familiarize yourself with the facts of the incident before spouting off. It's a lot harder to see into a person's mind than it is to look between their legs, and you couldn't even manage the latter! So why should anyone believe you can do the former?

[baldguy]

110. Gunworshipers here engage in endless ad homonym attacks

Can't handle valid criticism of their dogma and can't offer any support of their faith other than long-discredited lies.

The gun alone grants one the right to kill. Not the law. Not God. Not fear. Not any supposed physical, moral or financial threat.

And I'm sure some coward will hit ALERT for this post, too. Because they can't handle the truth.

[rrneck]

114. Pot meet kettle fail. nt

[Euromutt]

115. That "some coward" would have been me

Tell you what, why don't we take a look at the page on forum rules enforcement: http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html

If you've never read it (and you're certainly giving the impression that you haven't), maybe you should. You'll notice that "valid criticism" and "the truth" are not listed as reasons for the mods to delete a post. So what is? Here's an example:

Do not publicly accuse another member of this message board of being a disruptor, conservative, Republican, FReeper, or troll, or do not otherwise imply they are not welcome on Democratic Underground.

"Do not publicly accuse another member of being a Republican."
Is something dawning on you yet?

And a few paragraphs down we find:

Do not say that you are hitting the alert link to report another member.

If you have a problem with other posters making a bona fide attempt to comply with the recent request for civility and to adhere to the rules, why don't you take it up with Skinner and the mods and see about getting the rules changed? Or perhaps you could try familiarizing yourself with the rules and sticking to them.

Oh, and by the way, it's "ad hominem," not "ad homonym." "Homonym" is derived from Greek, in which "homos" means "same," whereas "ad hominem" is Latin, in which "homo" means "man" (as in Homo sapienshomo.

[Euromutt]

116. "The gun alone grants one the right to kill"? What's that even supposed to *mean*?

The gun alone grants one the right to kill. Not the law. Not God. Not fear. Not any supposed physical, moral or financial threat.

No sorry, I simply can't make sense of this assertion. Let's try it for a different activity.

"The jack and lug wrench alone grant one the right to change a tire."
"The photocopier alone grants one the right to make copies of a book."
"The crowbar alone gives one the right to break and enter."

No, none of those make sense either.

You certainly couldn't reasonably mean that possession of a firearm alone gives one the inclination and/or ability (rather than any right) to kill; estimated homicide rates in western Europe in the first half of the 14th century were much higher (exceeding 100/100,000 in some places) than any recorded U.S. homicide rate, and they didn't even have firearms yet! Hell, even today, 1/3 of homicides in the U.S. are committed with means other than firearms.

If by "can't handle the truth" you mean to say "can't make sense of my gibberish," you're onto something.

[aliendroid]

119. lots of people kill with their hands, but here is some real information, yeah you'll just ignore it

Lots of people kill with just their hands. Normally we are the ones showing people like you good arguments and you people talk about how this one time there was this shooting and someone got shot which is weak argument.

But you'll just ignore this post and go post somewhere else that we don't show you evidence. Really pathetic.

[slackmaster]

113. No you're not

You're being dishonest.

[Pavulon]

37. Many rational people voted in 1994 on this issue

I suggest you not fuck with it. You would be better served changing drug law and getting health care for the mentally ill.

Messing with this is the quickest way to elect republicans i can think of.

Find a new issue, this one is done.

[rd_kent]

53. Thats three more than there might have been had this NOT been a gun free zone.

[aliendroid]

73. actually, you are wrong

If there was a concealed carry permit holder with a gun in the room she probably would have been the only one injured.

[SteveM]

99. Guess till your heart's content. You have little else to go on. nt

[SteveM]

98. No, "zero tolerance" of guns means zeroing in on the unarmed, but you knew that. nt

[louis-t]

5. Right, if only the entire world was armed to the teeth.

And a great big :eyes:

[pneutin]

9. No one suggested that but you

I only wish to not enact silly rules like a zero tolerance policy. Give people the option of arming themselves or not.

[Walk away]

15. It seems to me that people who want to carry guns to school already do so...and they kill people.

Someday people who love guns will have their own place to play with them away from the rest of us (who out number them more every day).

[pneutin]

41. You're absolutely right, those criminals carry guns to school already...

...regardless of any silly zero tolerance policies. How about not imposing these restrictions on victims?

[Walk away]

94. Maybe there could be designated schools for you and your family to carry guns in.

That way all of the guns could be together and us poor gun control folk can take the chance of having a shooter in our schools. I wonder which place would end up being the safest...

And which one would graduate the most doctors, award winning scientists and even people who don't believe in "intelligent" design.

[rd_kent]

54. well that just goes to show you really have no idea what you are talking about.

[aliendroid]

75. wrong place

deleted

[SteveM]

102. "There's no place like home (click), there's no place like home..."

When you get back to Kansas or Brooklyn, please be informed of the reality:

"Gun-free zones" are for the law-abiding. Therefore "it seems to me that people who want to carry guns to school already do so..." is in its curious way correct. But you know as well as I that they are criminals or nut-cases. The law-abiding (as evidenced by the lack of return gun-fire in most of these mass killings) do not carry, despite the insanity of the "gun-free zone" laws.

Where law-abiding folks ARE allowed to carry, the crime rates of these persons is a small fraction of the general population. So in reality, even if guns were legally allowed "on campus," the only ones who would shoot at innocent people are still the crims, thugs and nut cases. Frankly, with concealed-carry, you would never know is armed, so no need to fantasize about "someday."

BTW, it is not wise to suggest guns are to be "played with." They are not toys, as you suggest.

[demigoddess]

24. how about really cute and stylish kevlar vests. I think they would become quite the trend.

I might buy one.

[SteveM]

101. "entire world armed to the teeth" is the latest gun-control bogey...

You will not find in these pages anyone who advocates this. And you know it. It is merely the latest slash & burn slogan of the gun-controllers who are caught up like Ahab-on-Moby Dick in a culture war they can't win; an addiction they can't shake.

[virginia mountainman]

6. no suprise.....

Another mass shooting, in a gun free zone...


Here is their policy...Notice, how the perp, did not follow the rules...

http://www.iss.uab.edu/Pol/FirearmsFtab.pdf

[sellitman]

10. Until lives become more important than the gun lobby this will continue

Pile on.

[Walk away]

12. Amen +1

[xchrom]

23. +2

[Pavulon]

35. Finish up your drug ban, and I will GIVE you every gun I own..

good luck with that.

[rd_kent]

55. Really? You realize this happened where guns are banned, right?

[aliendroid]

68. anecdotal argument, lame, what about the 170 or so million killed by their gov last century

We can remove all guns and see if our really nice and rights respecting federal government never commits genocide, but I don't trust them, I've seen how they treat people in other countries, without dignity, without respect for their rights and forcing them to do what our government wants. I will keep my guns and a few dozen people may die per year in mass shootings. Also consider the many lives saved by recent concealed carry permits reducing violent crime so much.

[aliendroid]

69. solution, allow concealed carry on campus

This is a gun free zone. They attract shootings. Solution. Get rid of gun free zone.

[SteveM]

103. Please, what is the "gun lobby," and how do you judge the importance of lives?

[aliendroid]

118. the "gun lobby" are keeping you free

YOu wonder why we have such a bad reputation in other countries? Because when our government goes to other countries in which the people are not armed (notice we don't go to Switzerland or israel to push them around) our government forces them to do what our government wants them to do without regard to their rights or dignity. If we were unarmed, what do you think our government would do here? But people like you ride on the backs of other people who keep you free and then you hate them for it. morons!

[SteveM]

123. Did you miss-post? I asked someone else to define "gun lobby"...

I didn't expect an answer from that poster because he/she is more interested in casting the same aspersions out, over & over again. I don't think I am the "people like you (who) ride on the backs of other people..."

[Euromutt]

107. Replace "gun lobby" with "misplaced sense of personal honor" and you might be onto something

You may be familiar with the term "amok." Originally, in Malay (and Tagalog) it meant (approximately) "mad with uncontrollable rage," referring to a state in which a person would seemingly "snap" and go on a killing spree until stopped, usually by being killed himself.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok):

The explanation which is now most widely accepted is that amok is closely related to male honor (amok by women is virtually unknown). In many cases where the background of the amok-runner is known, there seems to have been some element of deep shame which prevented the man from living honorably, as he saw it, in his own society. Running amok was both a way of escaping the world (since perpetrators were normally killed) and re-establishing one's reputation as a man to be feared and respected.

Doesn't that sound eerily similar to every mass shooter you've heard of? Of course, Malays who ran amok didn't use guns; they typically used large knives, like a kris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris) or a parang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parang_%28knife%29).

To a very real extent, most--perhaps all--of what we in Western societies like to think of as "senseless" violence may in fact be related to personal honor, from gang members from Oakland to Jamaica to London killing people for showing "disrespect"; to members of Middle Eastern to South Asian cultures murdering female family members in "honor" killings; to the "Ti menya uvazhaesh?" ("Do you respect me?") of the drunk Russian; to the way that telling an American (s)he has an incorrect grasp of the facts can lead to the challenge "are you calling me a liar?"

I could go on. There was a study I ran across recently that indicated that (a) European homicide rates are much lower now than they were in the Middle Ages (medieval European homicide rates were at least four times as high as present-day American ones, and that was before they even had guns), (b) that the downward trend inexorably started in the 17th century, and (c) began in England and the Netherlands, and spread out from there. Interestingly, those last two points also apply to the Enlightenment, and while correlation does not imply causation, I feel the correlation cannot be dismissed as merely coincidental.

Consider also that American social structures are much less rigid than European ones; this is a country of immigrants, for whom the frame of reference of social status from their countries of origin ceased to mean very much once they came over here, or if they moved to a different state. An American's social status derives much less than a European's from where he's from and what his forebears did, and much more from how he comports himself in his new society. As a result, personal honor (however warped one's sense of it may be) is much more important to an American than it is to a European, and an affront to that personal honor is a far more serious thing. Possibly (in the person's perception) worth killing over. This may explain why the American homicide rate was higher than those of western European countries even before the latter adopted gun control measures (which mostly occurred around 1919-1920).

That's my hypothesis, anyway. It needs more research, but I think it's fairly plausible. The bottom line is that "running amok" isn't caused by the availability of firearms, and therefore cannot be limited by restricting private ownership of firearms.

[stray cat]

26. She got denied tenure and got revenge by killing co-workers -nothing about zero tolerance

[pneutin]

43. It had everything to do with zero tolerance

Zero Tolerance/Gun Free School Zones forbid weapons on campus. And yet that woman brought a gun anyway, but the victims were not allowed to.

[TheCowsCameHome]

27. I'm so sick of this crap.

Every goddamned day more people are wasted for nothing.

[SteveM]

104. She was a desperate, unbalanced woman who wanted pay-back...

for something she saw as unjust. She knew no one but her would be armed, so she went for it.

Frankly, for a country of this size, these kinds of shootings are pretty rare and might be rarer if we were to at least drop the gun-free zone status. In most states, less than 5% of those who have guns carry-concealed. There is little likelihood that any given college campus will go "guns for everyone" (the latest gun-control slogan), but there may be a deterrent effect on those who want to do some mass killing, or reduce the casualties.

[TheCowsCameHome]

111. So six people get shot or killed because she was "wronged".

Gun zones or not, this is just sickening.

She should get the DP x 3, just like her victims.

[SteveM]

122. Life w/out parole. I don't go with the death penalty, but I see your point. nt

[timeforpeace]

29. Is tenure really that important?

[stray cat]

36. Its up or out - she loses her job that she probably worked for 20 years to get

mostly with long hours and not much pay and in a male dominated work force. No excuse but it can be tough to be sabotaged after a lifetime of work. They may have been right that she didn't deserve tenure but sometimes the wrong person just doesn't like you. No different than going postal when your fired from a job

[DonP]

56. Sympathy for the shooter already!

Wow, you made that whole sympathetic story up in a really short time. I'm impressed. Your almost as good as Timothy McVeigh's lawyers at making feeble excuses for criminal behavior, congratulations!.

You know jack shit about what happened, but the woman that just took 3 lives that we know of, is a victim?

Hell, she might have been hired 30 days ago for all we know.

I think I'll wait to learn a few more facts before I start weeping for the poor woman as victim in a male dominated society. What if she shot three other women?

[stray cat]

57. Literacy is important - I said there was no excuse but was responding to a post about tenure

I hope you read news more than you read posts

[DonP]

60. Oh, well, that's makes your imaginary story all better then.

You contrive a detailed imaginary story about a person that committed a heinous crime and throw in one short "no excuse, but it can be tough ..." and then proceed to make excuses and draft your own little simplistic apologia, so we can just ignore the rest of your ramblings? Right.

Wait, ignore the rest of your post? - great idea! Thanks.

[Better Today]

62. Sympathy and approval are different things; I can totally sympathize

with the level of anger and frustration a person may have experienced, and still feel they picked a piss poor way to handle it, in this case piss-poor is completely an understatement, but the point remains.

Sympathy and understanding a perspective, is NOT the same as approving or condoning the choice of actions regarding that perspective. Conversely I can completely not understand or have sympathy for a perspective and still approve and condone the way a person handles themselves regarding their perspective.

That whole black and white attitude you're displaying is disturbing to me. How can we be the people of "the people" if we refuse to understand those things that are/have/will bring persons to heinous actions such as this woman turned to? If it had been a foreclosure victim who had been jacked around for months or years by the big banks, who shot his banker, somehow I think we would all have some idea of sympathy for that person even though we wouldn't in anyway want to be condoning the shooting.

Perhaps you've never been around the faculty at universities. Loosing tenure can be equivalent to becoming instantly homeless with having had no opportunity to create a nest egg. And no a recent hire wouldn't be looking at tenure, one has to put in many years at a university before tenure would ever be considered, I suppose their may be a few special ones with special connections that could get tenure quickly, but the average prof, 10+ years before tenure is even discussed . . . I'm not a prof, never have been, but my dad was and he hated the whole tenure thing, and I've heard indirectly numerous stories about tenure from others around my dad. So unless I've really misunderstood everything I heard, which is doubtful, there's no way she had only put in 30 days, or even only 3 years, it would've been into decades territory.

[SteveM]

105. I detect a little excuse-making here, is it because she's a woman?...

"...male dominated work force," "...sabotaged after a lifetime of work." "...sometimes the wrong person just doesn't like you."

I feel better that you have force-fit this incident into some sort of half-baked feminist dialectic.

Could you explain how the word "sabotage" figures into your analysis? (I won't bother with 'male-dominated.')

[Tim01]

74. Nutcase college professor. And nobody to stop her. nt

[aliendroid]

78. think of the defenseless victims

Think of the people who were in that room without any way to stop her because their idiotic government decided to make the campus a no gun zone. The anti-gun people have no evidence to back their claims that guns are bad. We have plenty of evidence that guns in the hands of law abiding people reduces violent crime and murder. Yet for whatever selfish reason you have, whether it be power mongering or just plain ignorance, you still want to keep people on campuses defenseless. Very selfish.

[TheCowsCameHome]

112. She damn well didn't. She killed her brother 24 years ago, BTW.

She though only of killing innocents the other day because she had a gripe.... a fucking gripe.

[aliendroid]

77. ban tenure

I think if professors and teachers didn't have to have tenure to feel fuzzy and good about themselves this would not have happened. I think trying to ban all guns would result in a civil war that will cost the lives of millions, so every time a gun grabber thinks of banning the guns, you are in danger of killing lots of people, so stop it.
I think we can get rid of tenure without any deaths, and then professors/teachers can be fired if they're bad and kept if their good like any other employee

[gorfle]

124. This has nothing to do with tenure.

This has nothing to do with tenure. She's was nothing but one of an endless stream of folks who got a poor job review. But not everyone goes on a killing spree.

No, clearly this woman had issues. She killed her brother some 30 years ago, shooting him 3 times in the chest with a shotgun and it was ruled an "accident".