04-20-2007, 08:25 PM
When I first saw a snippet on CNN that there was a school shooting, I just shrugged it off and didn’t even think about it at all. Then throughout the day I overheard co-workers tallying up the body count. It went from 2 dead to 9 to 20 to 22 to 30 to 32. Then it stopped going up and I was disappointed. Yeah 9 is good but 20 is even better. 32? Pretty impressive. But when it was all done I just ended up expecting more. Yeah 32 sounds like a lot, but it very easily could have been a lot more. And if it were 52 or 62, I would have been disappointed it didn’t reach 100.
The most shocking thing about this is that it doesn’t happen more often. It is really very easy to do. I work at UNLV and in the 200 or so foot walk from my building to the student union there are at least 100 people walking around, 80 of whom could easily be mowed down. And that’s just outdoors with a lot of open space where the likelihood of getting stopped is very high. Indoors, there are buildings with dozens of classrooms which hold 30-60 or so people in a closed, confined space. Just think of all the thousands of colleges and universities in this country and how easy it is for anybody to get around campus. Then think of how many students there are attending these colleges. Then think how many of those students are fucked up, detached, emotionally disturbed individuals that were raised by fucked up, detached, emotionally disturbed parents. It’s truly mind boggling to me how rare these occurrences are. The logistics of running around with a gun shooting as many people as you can is the easy part. The hard part is to be committed enough to actually follow through.
I understand the need to find someone living to place blame on, but blaming the university for what they perceive to be a delayed response is pointless. 2 people are shot in a dorm and they are supposed to know 30 more people would be shot 2 hours later? I just hope this doesn’t lead to any kind of “crisis training sessions” here. Drills designed to train people how to hide beneath desks during shootings and the like. This would be as pointless as fire drills, which have people form an orderly line, exit through the proper exit in a calm fashion and move to a designated area away from the building. All the while they’re laughing and joking around. Meanwhile, when an actual fire comes along, nobody is going to remember what they learned months ago during a mandated, routine fire drill that nobody took seriously. They’re going to fucking panic and start going apeshit. Human instinct will take over and they will trample over each other in an effort to find the fastest way out, even if it isn’t the “designated exit route.” People don’t like admitting it, but the fact is there’s absolutely nothing that can be done to prevent things like this from happening. What’s to stop someone from walking into a casino with a suitcase bomb, placing it underneath a chair, then walking away? It’s as easy as walking through a building shooting people. The hardest part, again, is actually having the sack to follow through with it.
People outraged at NBC for airing the “manifesto” must be living in some alternate reality. How do they expect NBC to respond to receiving videos, pictures, and documents from a guy that just executed the biggest shooting spree in US history? When NBC got the package and was sifting through its contents, do you really think they went “oh this is horrible, let’s not give this psycho creep any more airtime.” Or was their reaction “WOO HOO, RATINGS BABY! CHA CHING, CHA CHING!” You know they were ecstatic he decided to send it to them instead of greasy FOX. My only complaint to the way NBC handled this package is that they only aired some of it. They said he ranted against religion and rich people, but the only kind of reference to religion I heard was when he mentioned something about Jesus Christ. I am curious to hear what else he had to say about the subject. If you’re going to make a celebrity out of the guy and post his pictures on the front page of every news website, the least you can do is broadcast all of his beliefs and grievances.
As an aside, I foresaw this happening. Well, not this exactly, but I did pick VA Tech to get to the Final 4. Not for anything having to do with basketball, because I watched no more than 10 minutes of college basketball all season and knew no players on the team. In filling out my bracket I just had a vision of VA Tech being in the news, occupying headlines around April. If nothing else did, this should have raised a huge red flag and should have led to them evacuating the campus. Now their blood is on my hands. Way to go, Hokies!
The most shocking thing about this is that it doesn’t happen more often. It is really very easy to do. I work at UNLV and in the 200 or so foot walk from my building to the student union there are at least 100 people walking around, 80 of whom could easily be mowed down. And that’s just outdoors with a lot of open space where the likelihood of getting stopped is very high. Indoors, there are buildings with dozens of classrooms which hold 30-60 or so people in a closed, confined space. Just think of all the thousands of colleges and universities in this country and how easy it is for anybody to get around campus. Then think of how many students there are attending these colleges. Then think how many of those students are fucked up, detached, emotionally disturbed individuals that were raised by fucked up, detached, emotionally disturbed parents. It’s truly mind boggling to me how rare these occurrences are. The logistics of running around with a gun shooting as many people as you can is the easy part. The hard part is to be committed enough to actually follow through.
I understand the need to find someone living to place blame on, but blaming the university for what they perceive to be a delayed response is pointless. 2 people are shot in a dorm and they are supposed to know 30 more people would be shot 2 hours later? I just hope this doesn’t lead to any kind of “crisis training sessions” here. Drills designed to train people how to hide beneath desks during shootings and the like. This would be as pointless as fire drills, which have people form an orderly line, exit through the proper exit in a calm fashion and move to a designated area away from the building. All the while they’re laughing and joking around. Meanwhile, when an actual fire comes along, nobody is going to remember what they learned months ago during a mandated, routine fire drill that nobody took seriously. They’re going to fucking panic and start going apeshit. Human instinct will take over and they will trample over each other in an effort to find the fastest way out, even if it isn’t the “designated exit route.” People don’t like admitting it, but the fact is there’s absolutely nothing that can be done to prevent things like this from happening. What’s to stop someone from walking into a casino with a suitcase bomb, placing it underneath a chair, then walking away? It’s as easy as walking through a building shooting people. The hardest part, again, is actually having the sack to follow through with it.
People outraged at NBC for airing the “manifesto” must be living in some alternate reality. How do they expect NBC to respond to receiving videos, pictures, and documents from a guy that just executed the biggest shooting spree in US history? When NBC got the package and was sifting through its contents, do you really think they went “oh this is horrible, let’s not give this psycho creep any more airtime.” Or was their reaction “WOO HOO, RATINGS BABY! CHA CHING, CHA CHING!” You know they were ecstatic he decided to send it to them instead of greasy FOX. My only complaint to the way NBC handled this package is that they only aired some of it. They said he ranted against religion and rich people, but the only kind of reference to religion I heard was when he mentioned something about Jesus Christ. I am curious to hear what else he had to say about the subject. If you’re going to make a celebrity out of the guy and post his pictures on the front page of every news website, the least you can do is broadcast all of his beliefs and grievances.
As an aside, I foresaw this happening. Well, not this exactly, but I did pick VA Tech to get to the Final 4. Not for anything having to do with basketball, because I watched no more than 10 minutes of college basketball all season and knew no players on the team. In filling out my bracket I just had a vision of VA Tech being in the news, occupying headlines around April. If nothing else did, this should have raised a huge red flag and should have led to them evacuating the campus. Now their blood is on my hands. Way to go, Hokies!