Gunman kills 32 on campus!

[Thrik]

Yeah, Kotaku has absolutely become an embarrassment of a site. If a post isn't taking things completely out of context to create controversy or blatantly attempting to provoke a comment backlash by insulting someone or something, then it's probably the profanity-filled report of some ranting, outrageous dick who thinks he sounds really intelligent (case in point: link in this thread).

[Mojo]

It has some good news, I don't care to follow any of the user comments I mainly just go there for the stories.

Good to see Rush Libaugh voicing against "video games are to blame"

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rush-limbaugh/ ... 253132.php

Rush Limbaugh Said:

But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this.

[Rick_D]

this is a seriously funny comment from games&politics:

# CFTF Says:

April 17th, 2007 at 6:01 am

The first school shooting in American history was 1966. Predates videogames.

Apparently, the gunman was a Chinese national. As someone studying in China right now, the most overwhelmingly popular games are RTS/MMOs/crazy Chinese games… nary a FPS in sight. And they’re not exactly known for playing console games.

If he’d been running around campus with a sword yelling “FOR THE HORDE!” every time he cut someone down? You might have a case. Here? Not so much.

[von*ferret]

While I agree with your point about gun control Rick, I dont think that students on campus having guns is as good as an idea as you might think. When police respond there is a greater chance of them shooting an innocent person. If 5 people have guns and 1 of them is a killer then not only can you get some deadly cross fire you can get innocent people killed when police come in to handle the situation.

[kleinluka]

besides that, you can be CERTAIN that these guns would not be used responsibly, solely for self-protection in case of some guy trying to start a massacre... think about it. a fight breaks out, somebody pulls out their gun and blasts the other guy and then says "OH BUT IT WAS SELF PROTECTION. ITS IN THE LAW!"

if you make it legal to walk around with a gun on campus, you'll hear about school shootings more often i can promise you that...when people get into a rage they often don't think, and a short-term overreaction might lead to simply pulling out the gun and killing someone. so yeah, you might not have 30 dead in a single day maybe.... but spread out across a year, i think the number would be much higher than that...

[Spellbinder]

Of course you'd think that as a result of such a horrendous incident that the authorities would finally question and debate America's rights to bare arms, but I doubt very much that anything will change in that respect.

you'll find that people who legally own guns and passed all the tests to get them are not the people going around shooting people all the time. It's not very often that a criminal legally buys a gun. The country is already flooded with weapons, and by taking away the guns from responsible gun owners who legally acquired their weapons all you're doing is disarming people who aren't doing anything wrong.

I thought about this for a while. Isn´t it so that most murder happens in the home?

[Bluestrike]

Of course you'd think that as a result of such a horrendous incident that the authorities would finally question and debate America's rights to bare arms, but I doubt very much that anything will change in that respect.

I used to believe that the right to bear arms was a questionable one at best, but when you actually look at the facts, you'll find that people who legally own guns and passed all the tests to get them are not the people going around shooting people all the time. It's not very often that a criminal legally buys a gun. The country is already flooded with weapons, and by taking away the guns from responsible gun owners who legally acquired their weapons all you're doing is disarming people who aren't doing anything wrong. States that have concealed carry laws are far less attractive to criminal activity because when every other person might just be carrying a gun you're hardly going to try anything because you'll get shot for your trouble. If you know that nobody is allowed to carry a gun about their person or in their homes then it gives you and your illegal weapon a license to do whatever the hell you want without fear of getting shot by civilians.

What the authorities should really do is try and reduce the amount of illegal guns, and introduce better laws and means of upholding laws that enforce people to secure their weapons safely in their homes, so people cannot steal them and sell them on, or kids can't get hold of them simply by opening a cupboard or looking in a shoebox.

If half the students had guns in their dorms then that punk-ass kid wouldn't have got very far after his first shot.

I'm not encouraging the arming of schoolchildren but the usual knee-jerk reaction is not always the best one, and there's always people behind the emotion who will attempt to exploit their own agenda - people far more dangerous and persuasive than JT.

When people question the right to wear arms, its not that they want to see them banned, whats imposible anyway, but subject to better rules (as you mention)

In Virginia a 12 year old is able to buy a gun.

Weapons are indeed spread widely over the US, there is a ratio of 93-96 weapons per 100 people in the US, in Holland thats 2:100 Belgium 16:100 Norway 38:100 as far as I can remember the numbers from teh newspaper.

[Rick_D]

just wanted to make a point that the people that go on these crazy killing sprees pick places where people are easy targets, if you knew that everywhere you went people would be armed you wouldn't have such an easy time getting past one victim.

I'm not saying that weapons should be widespread in any society - that's a dangerous thing, but if your sole reason to remove all legal weapons (which is what all these gun control people want) is the actions of someone like this then it's a flawed argument. Someone made a comment on another site that this person is going to be crazy with or without videogames, and I think the same applies to guns, they would have done something stupid like this if they didn't have guns, the death toll would just be lower.

But having laws in place that control how your weapons are stored etc will do much more for safety than just taking away legal weapons.

But to sum up, I didn't mean to suggest that students should be armed, just making a point that no guns doesn't always mean a safer place, it just means you are defenseless against a person who does have a gun.

[von*ferret]

People who want guns can get guns, I think thats the point Rick was making. And its true, I could get a gun any day of the week illegally. Doesn't mean I'm going to.

[twiz]

I may or may not have a friend who may or may not possess an illegal filed 1911 .45 acp.

[st0lve]

Read it yesterday. This is really making me worry about our western society, we appear to be getting sick and selfdestructive.. If these things will continue then we might have allready reached the top-hight of our advanced culture.

Sad news..

The good thing is, that we on the east side of the west (aka. Europe) don't have the overflow of weapons.

What I find strange, is that a building which contains close to 1000 students doesn't have armed guards at each entrance. School shootings have happened in USA before and probably won't stop just yet. As for the entire campus, there is like 24k students? And how many guards? 15?

Klein, yeah allowing guns on campus, imagine the chaos if someone pulls a "prank" on someone, and someone else sees it and then shoots at the guy making the "joke" with his gun, students shooting students in all directions and no one even know what happened.

If possible, the US should start a heavy background check of EVERYONE who wants a gun, checking for anything from family problems, school problems, addictions etc. etc. anything that might be an factor. And these should also be checked like once a year or so. Selling weapons over the counter is insane.

blue, as for the weapon ratio in Norway, hunting is the answer. And there are almost no handguns (you need to be a member in a shooting club for like 2 years and 21 years old to get a .22 pistol, and the more years the heavier gun). The rest is shotguns and hunting rifles.

[twiz]

Of course there is a background check to get a gun. Its not like you just walk into walmart, grab a gun off the shelf and pay for it and walk out.

Like everyone else has said, the real problem with reducing or removing a legal way to obtain a gun is that there are SO many guns here already, that'll just take guns out of the hands of people who aren't the problem.

I'm sure that school has more than 15 security guards, it probably has its own police force. The Uni that I used to go to was about that size, ~25k students, and like ~12k lived on campus. There was a police force of about 50 officers, and they were State police, not locals.. meaning they had more power than a 'normal' cop. They had a small SWAT team and one of those SWAT vans.

To have security guards outside of every entrance of every building on campus would be absurd. That is hundreds of guards... Chances are once the police were called someone was there within a minute or two. I know at my old Uni you could easily get across campus in a car in under a minute.

Its a tragedy but I don't think there is any logical way to prevent this kinda thing from happening.

[von*ferret]

You can get a gun almost anywhere in any country if you really want one. Purchasing it legally will require a background check already. Scary thing is that this gentleman bought it legally.

[Taylor]

Okay, I want a gun. How do I get one? Srsly it’s not that easy to be hooked up to a shady market. But I do agree this is a fruitless tangent, even if it’s almost obligatory on a forum; strict regulations on guns in America will be about as taboo as opening up the display case and spunking on the constitution, and we can all agree having a gun does not directly relate to being a psycho nutcase.

I’m annoyed by the speed in which Twat Thompson has latched onto this case, like the little tick he is, to blame games before the first shred of evidence he even played them. Debase a school shooting and entire entertainment industry just to he can stand on his soap box in front of the cameras and recite the same bullshit rhetorics again. Two things worry me in particular: 1) The creative writing class in which he wrote depraved stuff that worried his tutor and got him seeing a psychotherapist is completely glossed over, whereas blaming video games went straight into full swing without any foundation. 2) People are more happy to accept something is forcefully brainwashing millions of kids to turn them into murderers than, perhaps, that he was a heavily depressed psychopath with a gun.

Yeah, Kotaku has absolutely become an embarrassment of a site. If a post isn't taking things completely out of context to create controversy or blatantly attempting to provoke a comment backlash by insulting someone or something, then it's probably the profanity-filled report of some ranting, outrageous dick who thinks he sounds really intelligent (case in point: link in this thread).

My mouth, you took words out of!

[von*ferret]

Yeah what scares me is the roommates who realized that nothing was wrong. They knew something was up when he talked and wrote about murder. Its the same case of everyone seeing the signs, no one doing anything about it.