The Obligatory Va. Tech Shooting Thread

by John Hawkins | April 16, 2007 2:52 pm

Obviously, the Va. Tech shooting is big news, but beyond the basics, there still isn’t a lot of hard news out there.

There was a shooting this morning and then a couple of hours later, somebody went into a building and killed at least 32 people.

Was the early shooting done by the same person who killed all those people later in the day? We don’t know. This new “Charles Whitman” is dead. What’s his name? We don’t know. There are so many blanks that aren’t filled in at this point, it’s hard to comment intelligently.

The politicians are already jumping in early however. The Houe has already had a moment of silence, Bush has a press conference at 4:15, and Va. governor Tim Kaine is on his way back from Japan to Virginia.

The inevitable cries for gun control[1] have already started on the left side of the blogosphere, but the traditional apportioning of blame, explanations of how Bush is at fault for this tragedy, and calls for new legislation don’t seem to have gotten started yet. That should start to change by later tonight or some time tomorrow at the latest.

So, for the moment, all that can be said is, “sorry for your tragic loss” to the friends and families of people who lost lives at Va. Tech.

* This thread will be updated later tonight as more information becomes available.

Update #1: Earlier in this post I said,

“The inevitable cries for gun control have already started on the left side of the blogosphere, but the traditional apportioning of blame, explanations of how Bush is at fault for this tragedy, and calls for new legislation don’t seem to have gotten started yet. That should start to change by later tonight or some time tomorrow at the latest.”

Well, the calls for gun control have continued. Here’s Cliff Schecter[2],

“To those who say guns don’t kill, people kill.

Maybe, but guns sure do make it easier to mow down 22 innocent college students at a time.

WHERE THE HELL ARE THE GUN CONTROL ACTIVISTS?”

Oh, don’t worry, Cliff, they’re coming.

The “traditional apportioning of blame” seems to be continuing apace as well on the cable news networks. The fall guy here appears to be the university for not immediately cancelling all classes and locking down the campus because now that we have had a mass murder, there are experts coming out of the woodwork to say that obviously if some nut freaks out and kills 2 people over his girlfriend, he’s going to go on a mass murdering spree later in the day instead of running away.

The explanations of how Bush is responsible have already started, too, in a roundabout way (They’ll come up with something more direct presently). From Joseph A. Palermo at The Huffington Post[3],

“Therefore, the true “debate” must center on publicly financing campaigns because until and unless we break the stranglehold of the NRA on our politicians from both political parties, there will never be any progress in addressing the underlying causes of these predictable and horrific spasms of suicidal gun violence. Whoever the killer is, if he didn’t have access to a gun those 31 people would be studying for their midterms right now.

Also, if David Brooks and the Rightwing can blame video games and the violent movies coming out of Hollywood for the school shootings, then I think it is also fair to place some of the blame on our political leaders who called for us to invade and occupy Iraq. The bloodbath and carnage daily reported out of Iraq, as well as our young people going in and out of that death trap, provide the background noise for the violence that pervades our society.”

See? Bush’s war in Iraq provided the “background noise” that drove the guy to kill. So, if George Bush hadn’t invaded, they’d still be alive. Also, may I note that this statement isn’t necessarily true, “Whoever the killer is, if he didn’t have access to a gun those 31 people would be studying for their midterms right now.” As a matter of fact, the biggest school killing in US history was committed with a bomb, not a gun, back in 1927. One Andrew Kehoe[4] “killed 45 people and injured 58, mostly children in second to sixth grades” in explosions.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t have any new legislation yet because all the politicians are spending their time trying to appear sympathetic in front of the camera, but there is still plenty of time for politicians to gussy up their pet legislation and introduce it as a “response” to this school shooting.