Massacre At Virginia Tech

[LeperMessiah26]

Information that the Police were chasing the WRONG man,for TWO hours, is a little hard to hear for the familys i assume

The first girl he killed,the cops went after HER boyfriend apparantly

He killed two people first..then two hours later,went and killed another 31 people(including himself)...in that two hour period,he went and mailed a package of pictures and quicktime movies to a news station.

The cops thought the killer had left the campus,so didnt think anyone else was in imminent danger...they went after the wrong man,and the killer came back,and the rest is history

The movies are of him ranting,such things as a hatred of the rich..that he wanted to *Get Even* with them

Also

*This didnt have to happen,you had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today.

But you decided to spill my blood,you forced me into a corner,and gave me only one option.The decision was yours.Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off*

He had mental problems,he even had some sort of mental health treatment
He didnt mention who the Videos were aimed at..no names or anything

He seemed to crave female attention,and would try and message girls on various computer messenger systems,and also with text messages via mobile fone...but get spurned

He was infatuated with a girl,who didnt want to know...so got suicidal

I dont think he hated ALL women like Outlaw thinks,just the ones who spurned him....maybe thats who hes talking to in his sick videos?

He sounds like those Al Quida people,who make those videos ranting about how such and such is going to happen,if you dont do such and such

He was a nutter,plain and simple...and a coward,as he shot himself,so he wouldnt have to deal with the consequences

I dont think you can blame it all on Bush,and the gun laws in America....i do find it strange that you can buy a gun at 18,but not have a drink till 21...thats just bizarre

Truth is,no one person,(Bush) or movie companys,or game companys,not even the parents are fully to blame....its the individual

A sane person,who knows the difference between wrong or right,whats fantasy and whats real...will not go out and kill someone

Just because i play Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas...it doesnt mean im going to go around speaking like a black gangster,and *Pop a cap in yo ass*

Or watch Natrual Born Killers,and hook up with a girl,and go around slaughtering people

You know,you just dont wake up in a morning,and think

*Ooh...i`ll just have a quick go on San andreas,then go out and recreate a killing i just did...then,go back home...watch a movie,say The Accused...then go and Rape a woman,as thats what happened to Jodie Foster,then,listen to some Rap song about killing cops,then go KILL a cop myself..then go and play Streetfighter 2..then go out and kick the shit out of someone...then chill out*

It just doesnt work like that...you have to have that kind of deranged attitude to start..

Think about this...video games are still pretty new,been around what,30 years max?? the first games were like Space invaders or Pac Man or something...you play Pac Man,that mean it makes you go and eat White things....i dunno,bloody mints or something,from the floor???...NOPE!!!

Movies,they are probably 100 years old,if not more...the old old movies,are not graphic,they show you nothing but a man holding his chest,with tomato sauce pouring from the wound,a wound you dont see

Murders have been going on since TIME BEGAN....what did they blame them on back when there were no video games,or violent movies? The Individual..and how deranged and sadistic he/she was...not a bloody video game,or a movie.

If you are of sound mind..you know its just a movie/a game...ITS NOT REAL!!!

Its just these days,Movies and Video games are graphic...violent...so its easy for authorities to automatically blame them for everything...but if you do that,then you have to blame TV in general...you watch the news,theres always stories of a bloody killing in whatever area...graphic descriptions of what happened,pictures of a covered up body on the street...Magazines with the same shit in them..etc etc etc

What gets said about that? nothing..as its the *News*

Two scenarios for ya

News Broadcast :

A 15 year old boy got shot today,in what witnesses decribed as a Drive by Shooting...the shooter fired 4 bullets into the chest of the 15 year old

Hollywood Movie :

A 15 year old boy is walking down the street,a car comes near,and a man shoots him 4 times in the chest..then the car drives off

Same incident...there are two differences,one is real,one is fantasy,one is what you hear about,one is what you see...the so called *Inspiration* is the SAME...so why blame one and not the other,if its basically the same thing??

One last comment,a quick one about parents

Parents could drive it into their kids,that killing,violence,drinking,drugs etc is wrong,you should stay away...show them all the love and devote all their time to them....and maybe 4/10 will STILL end up being a killer,drug addict,alchoholic...so its not ALL down to parenting

Jesus..this is a long post..im done

[Fadingtoblack]

I read it all - now I'm off for a lie down.....


Seriously though you made good points, tragic circumstances regarding the police reaction to the original shooting. And you're right, video games and movies make zero difference to those of us who aren't already f*cked up in the first place...

[MetDream]

Fallout from this shooting:

Some assbite who is an University of Nevada reno alumni called the Virgina shooter a "hero" and now the campus has been evacuated and locked down.
This guy is crazy too.. all kinds of reports about him.

I called my friend who is doing her PHD there, they are having a huge day at UNR tomorrow. some united nations festival or something like that, awards ceremony etc...

EDIT: They arrested the guy tonight.

[Doin]

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/fact ... _facts.pdf

In 2004, 29,569 people died in the USA from firearm related deaths.
11,624 were murdered, 16,750 were suicides, 649 were accidental and 235 were intent unknown.
33,651 Americans were killed in the Korean war and 58,193 were killed in Vietnam.
There are an estimated 192,000,000 prviately owned firearms in the United States. That's an estimated 39% of the population.

In 2004, 56 people were murdered by firearms in Australia, 184 in Canada, 73 in England and Wales, 5 in New Zealand, 37 in Sweden.

This IS an American problem. If people in a country don't have easy access to guns, they don't shoot people. Simple.
A murder rate like that is equivalent to a warzone. But then America is a country at war...

OK. Off to see Paul Stanley....

[Judge B]

In 2004, 56 people were murdered by firearms in Australia, 184 in Canada, 73 in England and Wales, 5 in New Zealand, 37 in Sweden.

This IS an American problem. If people in a country don't have easy access to guns, they don't shoot people. Simple.

Yes it is. But changing gun laws won't do shit about that situation.

Countries (except Canada) you're comparing against are MUCH smaller.

[Fadingtoblack]

Well if you work it out (using Doin's figures, and I think I got it right...):


Population of America. @ 300,000,000 - 0.0001% gun deaths

Population of Australia @ 22,000,000 - 0.000002%


So if you compare the countries equally, America has @ 39 TIMES more gun deaths than Australia.


At least part of that has to be due to the availability of guns in the States.

[Doin]

There were 29,000 gun-related deaths in one year.
There were 33,000 deaths in the Korean war. That was over 4 years, and it was a warzone.
There were 58,000 deaths in Vietnam. That lasted 16 years and again, a warzone.

Basically, people who don't have guns don't shoot others.

Changing gun laws in America is too late. The gun lobby is too strong, the constitution includes the right to bear arms and the guns are already out there.

Paul Stanley was taped.

[OutlawTorn81]

LeperMessiah26 said:

I dont think he hated ALL women like Outlaw thinks,just the ones who spurned him....maybe thats who hes talking to in his sick videos?

Folks, this is becoming far too common of a theme in here, and it's really starting to raise some questions for me about some of my colleagues here at Metpage. Why is it that some guys--and notice that it is guys--are so intent on trying to shelve and reject the idea that I'm putting forward that this guy hated women, in spite of all the overwhelming evidence? What is your motivation to become a quasi-apologist/defender of a sociopath and a megalomaniac? What do you gain from saying that this guy did not hate all women?

I tend to have little interest in holding people's hands through a discussion. If someone can't hang with me without me spelling it out five times, they're generally not worth the effort. But this is an issue of such importance that I feel compelled to lay out the case, again and again because it is apparently necessary, as to why this guy was a misogynist that had a vendetta against, but certainly not limited to, women.

Let's start with the male entitlement. For those who do not know what male entitlement is, go here for a really solid example. It broils down to the male-held belief that they should have access to any woman, at any time, and they should do a man's bidding. The guy was a stalker, continuing to pursue women that had rejected him, to what end? Did he believe that if he just kept on persisting, eventually his charm would warm over those indignant women and they'd just drop their clothes for him? Victim #1, Emily Hirscher, was someone who did not want to be with him, so he murdered her. If he couldn't have her, no one could. That is entitlement, to the very last T. The media stories were intent on framing this as a "domestic dispute" gone horribly wrong, and the British paper I cited earlier shifted the blame for the entire rampage onto her. Whatever their misguided perception, there was apparently enough information available for them to run on the assumption that love gone bad drove a man to madness.

His male entitlement is readily obvious throughout his rampage and the vile package he sent to NBC. Why would he do that? You guessed it, entitlement. This was a man who wanted the world to know that he had the power, the power to destroy, the power to control, the power to dominate. Whatever loss of power he felt because of the individual women that spurned him, he would show them, and the world, that he still wielded more power than them. He was trying to prove a point, to satiate his own ego beyond the grave, and guess what? It's worked. Everybody knows his name, his image has been on the airwaves almost non-stop since Monday. Everybody that is watching CNN non-stop for more information on him and this story is now bent to his will. Entitlement.

How does that rejection from individual women become a more generalized misogyny? Very easily. Get rejected enough times, and it doesn't take long for an entitled man who is not getting his entitlements (Canadian politicos here will smile and think of David Dingwall) to shift focus against the entire class that is denying him what he feels is his natural right. That helps to explain his indiscriminate rampage that followed the supposed "domestic incident," though of course not in full. Someone who makes no distinction among the people he is targeting, and ensures to shoot a woman directly in the eye, has clearly expanded upon his localized hatred of women. He's not as singularly focused as the Amish school murderer of last fall, obviously, as he was gunning down both women and men, but I would not be surprised if we find out that he took particular joy in killing women as a message that none of them will ever reject him again.

This is a well-founded argument. I'm not a certified psychologist--I'm a political scientist--but I've read more than enough books from people who are, combined with a large amount of feminist studies, that I feel at least somewhat qualified to speak about things such as male entitlement and misogyny, and apply them to particular cases. I have yet to see somebody here put up any kind of argument that defeats my own--only a string of one-line rejections from guys that want to downplay the woman-hating angle of this latest incident in which a large number of women were murdered by a man. I question the motivation for that defence, in light of all the overwhelming evidence of pervasive misogyny in Western society--2 British women are killed by their male partners every week; 1 in 3 Canadian women will suffer male violence in the course of their lifetimes; an ever-increasing rape rate, that is now, I believe I've read, 400% higher than 50 years ago; the increasing level of male violence against women in pornography, video games, and other forms of predominantly "male" forms of entertainment.

Again, I ask, why is it that you guys are rejecting my well-founded hypothesis out of hand, without any supporting evidence to bolster your rejection? What possesses you to become quasi-defenders of the worst mass murderer in American history's character and personality? Why do you seek to deny woman-hating as an (not "the") underlying cause of this mass murder?

[Leighton]

The overwhelming perpetrators of massacres have homosexual tendencies, or at least wildly abnormal sexual behavior. Dunblane and the Amish killer were child offenders (or at least fantisisers), Martin Bryant was a freak apparently, Dylan and Eric always struck me as a homo-erotic thing too and there's any number of mass murderers who also fit the bill.

There's little doubt the woman he killed first set him off, but you've got to dig deeper to find the cause of his desperation for why he needed these women. I'm sure Emails or phone records will dig up a lot of dirt on his contact with that woman in the coming weeks. In fact, I'm willing to bet he wrote an absolute shitload as writing seems to be the only sort of communication this guy had.

The reason I don't agree with your reasons is because it would've been a much more obvious to everyone if he did simply hate women. Other students would've known, it would've been in his plays and boy, he wouldn't have hidden any meaning in his manifesto as most women haters I've read up on are usually simpletons. Cho was a loner who really had little regard for anyone or their lives in general, male or female.

Cho may have been frustrated within his mind about a lot of things. The obvious male thing to do would be to chase tail, so in an effort to correct his own mind he probably treated women like crap simply because he didn't know how to interact with them. The fact he stalked them does not mean he hated them. It means he wanted them, but couldn't have them. That'd make anyone's mind go crazy when he's trying to fight an "abnormal" urge by doing the "normal" thing and getting knocked back by it at every attempt.

Stalking just made it worse cause the women lash out at him, have the university come down on him for chasing them, get the law involved and watch over him and would magnify his tendencies because he's being told he couldn't have women when he wanted to rid his mind of those homosexual thoughts.

Cho probably kept his real thoughts suppressed for fear of feeling his father's wrath (another major reason I feel). His rants also included a hell of a lot of christian references, another group that would've put pressure on him if they'd known his thoughts. I have little reason to suspect he simply hated women outright (his ranting video even seemed to say he was avenging his "sisters" at one point), his victims of choice appeared to be the jocks or more "successful" with the ladies type of guys at a very sports/manly orientated environment (ie a big football school).

In conclusion, I think you (Outlaw) are taking things too simplistically and not really digging too deeply. If you're basing this on feminist readings of the past then of course you're going to come to that conclusion. Cho was never a man "in control" like you say. He was completely off the rails in every aspect of his life, not recently either. This guy had some sort of fucked up upbringing. Over-bearing parental control or neglect, abuse from somewhere for sure and not being able to escape his thoughts led to it. He gained a persecution complex from the pressure he built up and that initial victim unfortunately set him off.

[OutlawTorn81]

There's absolutely nothing in that post that refutes, rejects, or mitigates what I've been saying. Indeed, if anything, it augments and acts as a supplement to what I've been saying. I've been acknowledging all along that there are many aspects to this guy, and that his hatred of women is just one facet of the puzzle. I've never once said that his hatred of women is the sole motivation. Go and read the posts. Better yet, I'll hand them to you on a silver platter and make bold key points that I think you're missing for you to dismiss what I'm saying as too simplistic for your own liking:

"this guy was a misogynist that had a vendetta against, but certainly not limited to, women."

"That helps to explain his indiscriminate rampage that followed the supposed "domestic incident," though of course not in full. Someone who makes no distinction among the people he is targeting, and ensures to shoot a woman directly in the eye, has clearly expanded upon his localized hatred of women. He's not as singularly focused as the Amish school murderer of last fall, obviously, as he was gunning down both women and men, but I would not be surprised if we find out that he took particular joy in killing women."

"I have yet to see somebody here put up any kind of argument that defeats my own--only a string of one-line rejections from guys that want to downplay the woman-hating angle of this latest incident in which a large number of women were murdered by a man."

"Why do you seek to deny woman-hating as an (not "the") underlying cause of this mass murder?"

These statements are clear in their intent and their meaning.

Also, looking at this tragedy from this angle is not "taking things too simplistically" in any way. Had I been making absolute, as opposed to qualified, statements, yes that would be simplistic, but if you READ THE POSTS you will see that I am simply trying to explain one angle of this tragedy, one that seems readily apparent to anybody that is actually paying attention. I have to admit that I am astonished to see such lengthy posts that go into considerable detail--far more than any of my detractors in this thread--be dismissed by you so casually as "simplistic." Again, had I been saying from the outset that this guy was purely motivated by a hatred of women, you might be able to score a point or two off me, but that simply isn't there in my writing. If anything, you're reading me too simplistically and failing to take into account the very important distinctions that I've been making all along the way.

I write from a perspective of what I know about, and ensure that I'm not spewing bullshit to try and make a point. If I were a certified clinical psychologist like Dr. Phil, I'd most certainly venture into some of those other aspects of Cho's warped psychology that influenced his murderous actions. Like I said earlier, I know quite a lot from a feminist perspective, so that's the track I've been focusing on. I have not once said that misogyny was the sole impulse for Cho. I have been presenting an argument from a feminist perspective that misogyny played a significant--not exclusive--role in this tragedy. You say in your own words that he "had little regard" for people and "treated women like crap." Not knowing any better doesn't in any way diminish the fact of what it is.