VA Tech Shooting
I woke up this morning and did my usual thing of coffee, breakfast, and news when I found out that there was a shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. The details are unclear with a lot of rumors but there are fatalities and it is the worst shooting on a college in US history.
This is truly awful.
UPDATE (5:45pm EST): Holy shit. When I woke up this morning, the death toll was presumed to be less than 20. When I came back from work, the number is pushed to 33. I'm also hearing unconfirmed reports that the shooter was an Asian American male, and that some of the shootings were inside an engineering classroom. There's even a report about how there was a 2 hour gap between the first and second shootings. There's so many questions and I don't think the answers will be forthcoming on this horrific tragedy.
UPDATE (6:00pm EST): Out of all the links about this tragedy, this one caught my eye from SFGate.com which has a list of blogs from the students themselves as they talk about what happened. It's incredibly difficult to read. Also, I just heard that the news are now calling it the deadliest shooting in US history leaving out any reference to college. Finally, and not surprisingly, the rhetoric about NRA, gun control, violent video games, and everything else that needs to be censored and removed in popular culture is being discussed in full force. It's kind of pointless to even link it all since it's quite ubiquitous in the news and blogosphere.
I just wonder if we even get a moment to mourn anymore?
UPDATE (6:44pm EST): Is it me, or is MSNBC the only station identifying the gunman as "Asian American" and everyone else as either "American male" or "unknown"? I keep switching channels from one station to another and I read "Asian American" on the news ticker on MSNBC.
UPDATE (10:12pm EST): So now I'm hear the gunmen was a Chinese national ... ? Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, VA. That's roughly 2 hours southwest from where I live in Arlington, VA.
3 comments:
Very sad. I cannot understand why would someone want to go in a school and shoot people. And youngsters just embarking on their adult lives.
I live in Montreal. When it comes to College/University shootings, our city hold a very sad record. We had three in the past 20 years. Which is hard to understand, because compare to other North American metropolis, Montreal is not a very violent city. Every year, we have about 45 murders. Which I'm sure is pretty low compare to places like Toronto, New York, L.A. or Chicago.
Thanks for your posts, Sonia. It is a terrible tragedy that this violence happens anywhere at all. I saw the one video that recorded gunfire from a student's cellphone and it's terrifying to watch.
It's frightening to see the way violence is escalating everywhere. Things that were rarely, if ever, happening 15, 20 years ago are now daily occurence: road rage, rage in airplanes, people shooting their neighboor over a stupid disagreement about a fence, kids assaulting their teachers.
In the 80s and 90s, several people were fearful of the effect violent video games would have on kids. And now we see that this generation of young adults who grew up playing those games are more violent than any other generation before.
Here in Montreal, most murders used to be related to the Hells Angels, biker gangs, the mafia, rapists/murderers or they were crimes of passion... Since the beginning of 2007, all but one murder are related to street gangs. All but one! Until 5 years ago, the Montreal police did not even consider street gangs like a problem. They were just seen as kids trying to be tough. But the problem has since taken such proportions. It has taken everyone by surprise. Back in the 90s, all we would see on the news was about the war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machines. Now, we turn on the news just to see another 17 year old shot in the back in some street-gang related crime.
It's a tough world to grow up in these days. I have an 11 year old, and I'm scared to death for her.
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