Guns laws and Cho
How did he get a gun?
Entries Tagged as 'Virginia Tech Shooting'
Cho’s Teacher
Now, this is a teacher. This is a leader. She didn’t pass on Cho to anyone else. She identified the problem - Cho was too difficult to be in a regular class. We should all be lucky enough, blessed enough to have an instructor for just one class as gifted and dedicated as Lucinda Roy. (I was blessed to have several.) She is beating herself up for not doing more. She did all that she could. She cared. She tried to help in the only way that she could. That’s all that anyone can ask.
Finally, please notice how she doesn’t point fingers. She could have easily said, “I told so and so to lock him up but he wouldn’t.” What a great Professor.
From CNN.com:
A year and a half before before Cho Seung-Hui went on a deadly shooting spree on the campus of Virginia Tech, a professor was so concerned about his anger that she took him out of another teacher’s creative writing class and taught him one-on-one.
The former chairwoman of Virginia Tech’s English department, Lucinda Roy, said the anger Cho expressed was palpable if not explicit.
Cho, an English major, never wrote about guns or killing people, she said. But his writing was disturbing enough that she went to police and other university officials to seek help. (more..)
Could Cho legally own a gun?
From MSNBC.com: (this was written by Michael Isikoff)
Contrary to initial reports, Cho may not have been legally eligible (my emphasis) to acquire the two semi-automatic weapons that he used to murder more than 30 students at the school on Monday. Critics say Cho was able to collect his firearms without a hitch because of a gaping hole in the enforcement of existing federal gun laws that routinely allows mentally unstable people to buy deadly firearms.
In the three months before the shooting, Cho bought two handguns: a Walther .22 that he picked up on Feb. 9 at a Blacksburg pawnshop, and a second, more powerful, Glock 9mm, purchased on March 16 at a Roanoke firearms store. Cho filled out the required federal form, and a federally-mandated background check was conducted by the Virginia state police. But he was immediately cleared to buy the guns when no “hits” showed up in police data bases indicating he had any history of criminal activity.
That has led Virginia state police officials to declare that Cho’s firearms purchase were perfectly legal. But the same 1968 federal gun law that bars convicted criminals from buying firearms (passed in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy) also prohibits gun purchases by those who have a history of mental illness (again I added emphasis). Indeed, when Cho bought the guns, he had to answer the following question on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Form 4473: “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective or … committed to a mental institution?” Cho answered “no.”
NBC received package from shooter
Cho was clearly confused. At one point during the rant he compares himself to Jesus Christ. He also mentions the Columbine killers.
Addendum: Video updated. (I had the same video as in the previous post. Oooppss.)
Shooter sends video, audio and photos to NBC
These ramblings sure seem to indicate someone who is/was psychotic. Paranoid. Paranoid delusions. They are after him. They have “backed” him into a corner.
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From MSNBC.com:
Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho Seung-Hui mailed NBC News a large package including photographs and videos Monday morning, boasting, “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”
Cho, 23, a senior English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in two attacks before taking his own life. (more…)
From WaPo:
On the network’s “Nightly News” broadcast, anchor Brian Williams said the package was sent Monday via overnight mail, but didn’t arrive at NBC’s office until today because it had an incorrect Zip Code. Williams said a mail clerk received the package at 9:01 a.m., which was nearly two hours after campus police received a 7:15 a.m. call about at shooting at West Ambler Johnston dormitory. The second shooting at Norris Hall, an academic building across campus, was reported to police about 9:45 a.m.
The news network said it had turned the original package over to authorities. The video was said to include profane, often unintelligible rantings, and mentions of Cho’s anger at rich students. The network, in an earlier broadcast, showed photos of Cho posing with a pair of black pistols in his outstretched hands, with a hammer, and with a pistol pointed at the camera. (more…)
Some perspective on VT shootings
Keith Olbermann has a retrospective on what we know now. It was about 36 hours since the shooting started. We have learned a lot. I’m kinda surprised that everyone and I mean every one is there at Virginia Tech. From reporters to News Anchors. The students don’t have room to breathe without someone sticking a microphone in their face. They have had the president and the governor of Virginia on campus. Are more politicians coming?
Who was Cho Seung Hui?
After any terrible tragedy we try to focus on the killer(s) for clues. Things that we might have missed. I think that we are going to find that many people thought that this guy was weird and possibly disturbed.
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From MSNBC.com:
They met across the professor’s desk. One on one. The chairman of the English department and the silent, brooding student who never took his sunglasses off.
He had so upset other instructors that Virginia Tech officials asked whether the professor wanted protection. Lucinda Roy declined. She thought Cho Seung Hui exuded loneliness, and she volunteered to teach him by herself, to spare her colleagues. The subject of the class was poetry. (more…)
His dorm mate’s thoughts.
VT - bomb threats
This report was sketchy to say the least. A bomb threat note was found somewhere. It may have been found with the shooters stuff in his room. More as the story develops.
Juan Cole, a Michigan University, professor and blogger mentioned that 32 people get gunned down or bombed every day in Iraq.
Who died?
As I suspected, the students and professors who died at Virgina Tech were from a variety of backgrounds. I was really struck but the death of a Holocaust survivor. One would think that after you survived the Holocaust you were pretty save in Virginia. Very Sad.
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From CNN.com:
Liviu Librescu, 76, was a Holocaust survivor, who his son said, will be remembered as a hero. He “blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu told AP. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.” The elder Librescu, a professor at Virginia Tech, was recognized internationally for his research in aeronautical engineering, the head of the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department at Virginia Tech told AP. He was born and received his advanced degrees in Romania.
Professor Edward Smith of Penn State University wrote:
“Professor Librescu was well known in the aerospace engineering community. I have known professor Librescu for the past 18 years, ever since I was in graduate school. We attended the same annual conferences and working in the same research area (composite structures). He was a true gentleman. [He was] always very professional and ‘formal,’ dressed in a business suit and very serious about his work. Professor Librescu had a good sense of humor and had many friends in the aerospace community. We are all deeply saddened by this tragic loss.” (more on other victims…)
More on the shooting
As a trauma surgeon, I felt that I really don’t need to post anything on this shooting. I wanted my blog to be about politics. Well, politics is about people and nothing was more important yesterday than the shooting of dozens and the killing of 33 in Virginia. Gun control isn’t the answer although I’m all for removing assault rifles and Saturday night specials from the streets. The answer is to reduce the stress in the lives of the middle class. The answer is better security on campus. The answer is finally better detection of people who are not handling stress.
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
