Just a Reminder, The Next Time A European Gets Huffy...

About these gun mass murders being an American problem. From BBC, April 26, 2002:

Eighteen people died when an expelled former pupil went on a shooting spree at his school in the eastern German city of Erfurt.

Masked and dressed in black, the gunman walked through classrooms killing 14 teachers, two schoolgirls and one of the first policemen on the scene before taking his own life.

He was clothed completely in black and you could only see his eyes.

Pupils of the Gutenberg School spent four hours trapped inside before police could declare the building safe.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder described the massacre in the quiet provincial city as "beyond the powers of the imagination".

And this account from the New York Times in 1995:

After murdering three relatives at home, a teen-ager walked to the next village today and calmly opened fire on a quiet town square, killing nine more people before turning the gun on himself.

The incident was the country's worst multiple killing since 1989.

"It was like he was hunting birds," said Guy Sintes, the owner of a cafe on the square in Cuers, a village near the Mediterranean port of Toulon.

Television footage from the scene showed sidewalks and a car spattered with blood and a bullet hole through a shop window.

"The people are devastated, totally traumatized," said the Mayor of Cuers, Guy Gigou. "The village is in shock.",

The boy was identified as Eric Borel, 16. The impetus for the killings was unclear. His father died recently of cancer.

Neighbors, interviewed on French television, described him as taciturn and said his room was plastered with posters of Hitler and neo-Nazi themes.

From the Moscow Times:

GALI, Abkhazia -- One night in June at a lonely Russian post in the small village of Sida, Sergeant Artur Vaganov, 22, of the Russian peacekeeping force here, woke up to commit mass murder.

Very deliberately, he cut the post's communications, gathered together all the weapons and opened fire on his fellow soldiers as they slept in their bunks. He shot dead 10 men and wounded three more before killing himself. The building was still awash with blood the next day, eyewitnesses said.

And this 2002 Time article:

Last week's mass murder of eight city councilors in a Paris suburb left not only a traumatized community and bereft survivors. Coming in the thick of a presidential campaign, alsoit, set France searching for political meaning in a fundamentally senseless act. Both major candidates, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac, were on the scene before sun-up, condemning the attack in the same words, as "a murderous folly." Yet by the end of the day the two sides were enmeshed in a furious debate over the propriety of drawing any connection between the desperate act of a deranged man and "insecurity," a central theme of the campaign. Then that deranged man, Richard Durn, managed to commit suicide while in police custody, and the focus shifted again. How could government be so dysfunctional as to allow the avowedly homicidal and suicidal Durn to own and use guns and then make his dramatic exit?

You want more examples to show that this is not peculiarly or even especially American? See here.

The Copycat Effect

That's the name of both a web page and book about how coverage of tragedies pushes some over the top:

Sadly, I saw this coming.

In an article based on an email I sent to a Canadian TV reporter Bridget Brown on September 18th and her followup interview, CTV noted that Expert predicted 'cluster' of school shootings, on October 3rd, 2006.

In that article, I was quoted as noting the psychological process that these shooters appear to be "competing for the highest body count." Sadly, we've seen that come true today.

Also, the news item from last fall noted: "He says that while the Pennsylvania shootings may not be the last in this cluster, the copycat crimes will likely slow down as we near winter. He says spring, and the anniversary of Columbine, could be enough to spark another cycle of tragedy." Again, my prediction of a reigniting of the school shooting wildfire during this very week was revealed today.

...

Specfically today, there is something over-the-top being heard in some of the reports that this shooting today is the "deadliest" in American history. Also, incorrect information is being shared. These newspeople are misreporting on the profiles and the changes in it. Cable news earlier this afternoon misrepresented that this is an American-only problem. During the early evening, I just watched a report on CNN saying that the few historical non-American school shootings have been done by adult non-students.

Of course, this is simplistic. The American cable networks are ignoring Taber, Alberta (1999) to Erfurt, Germany (2002), and several in-between international events where the shooters have been relatively young people. The US media outlets are also forgetting that most of the fall 2006 American school shooting incidents involved outsiders, non-students and adults.

Last fall, as I told all that would listen, there was a shift in the overall North American shooter profile. It moved from one of mostly Caucasian males who were members of the student body to "outsiders." It began in earnest with the the youthful South Asian immigrant who became happier as a member of the cult of Columbine before his attack at Dawson College, and the two adult alleged sexual molesters who victimized young females in Bailey, Colorado and at the Amish school in Pennsylvania.

Will more of these happen? Probably.

There was a Columbine copycat shooting last week (April 11) in Oregon (with no deaths) in which the shooter said he got the idea after watching National Geographic's April 7th showing of "The Final Report: Columbine."

Those who have read my article in Journal of Mass Media Ethics aren't surprised by this--it has happened before, and it will happen again--especially the more media attention that this gets.

For all the attention that guns get as an "American" problem, there's this news story:

TOKYO - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot to death in a brazen attack Tuesday by an organized crime chief apparently enraged that the city refused to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site, news agencies reported.

The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only four politicians are known to have been killed since World War II.

Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station Tuesday evening, Nagasaki police official Rumi Tsujimoto said.

One of the bullets struck the mayor's heart and he went into cardiac arrest, according to Nagasaki University Hospital spokesman Kenzo Kusano. Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NHK said Ito died of his wounds early Wednesday.

Tetsuya Shiroo, a senior member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organized crime syndicate, was wrestled to the ground by officers after the attack and arrested for attempted murder, police said.

The Importance of Early Identification of Mental Illness Problems

In some cases, early identification of mental illness can lead to a cure; in other cases, it can lead to lives saved:

The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was described Tuesday as a sullen loner whose creative writing in English class was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.

News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.

...

Meanwhile, a chilling portrait of the gunman as a misfit began to emerge.

Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, said she did not know Cho. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as "troubled."

"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."

Do you have a student who is writing really worrisome, frightening stuff? Maybe this isn't a sign of creativity, but of someone who is seriously troubled.

UPDATE: There's a bit more detail here about the "disturbing writing"--and all I can think is--was Cho a victim? Might this have led to the depression and rage?

Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in a poetry class in fall of 2005 and later worked with him one-on-one after she became concerned about his behavior and themes in his writings.

Roy spoke outside her home Tuesday afternoon, saying that there was nothing explicit in Cho's writings, but that threats were there under the surface.

Roy told ABC News that Cho seemed "extraordinarily lonely—the loneliest person I have ever met in my life." She said he wore sunglasses indoors, with a cap pulled low over his eyes. He whispered, took 20 seconds to answer questions, and took cellphone pictures of her in class. Roy said she was concerned for her safety when she met with him.

She said she notified authorities about Cho, but said she was told that there would be too many legal hurdles to intervene. She said she asked him to go to counseling, but he never went.

One play attributed to him, called "Richard McBeef," describes a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of pedophilia, and ends with the boy's death.

In another, called "Mr. Brownstone," three high-school students face an abusive teacher.

"I wanna kill him," says one character.

"I wanna watch him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed," says another.

Why Did I Not Read This Earlier?

And why can't I find any news articles but this one from the Toledo Blade that mention it?

Ron Bliss thought he had found proof The Blade suppresses news that doesn't fit its "slant left" agenda.

"I was browsing the Internet and ran across a story on the 18-year-old mall shooter in Salt Lake City (who) was a Bosnian national. It told in the article that he was a Muslim and while he was killing the mall shoppers he was shouting Allah Akbar (Allah is Great.)

"Now then … this means it was either a terrorist act in America or at the very least, a hate crime."

Yet Mr. Bliss said he searched our archives and found nothing at all on the Feb. 12 shooting. If we deliberately suppressed it, he felt we should remove "One of America's Great Newspapers" from the front page.

Indeed, he would be right about our slogan if The Blade were deliberately censoring stories about Muslim terrorists. And if that were going on, I would have no desire to be associated with this newspaper.

But that's not what happened. In fact, The Blade ran at least five stories about the mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic, who had lived in Utah since his family fled Bosnia when he was 9 years old. Curiously, the newspaper did not report that he shouted "Allah Akbar" during his killing spree, which took the lives of five people before the police killed the gunman.

I have no idea why The Blade left that detail out since the Associated Press and other news services the paper subscribes to reported it.

Hmmm. A Muslim goes on a killing spree in a shopping mall, shouts "Allah Akbar" while doing so--and this doesn't get much press. This would seem to have some relevance, I think. You know, there was some unpleasantness a few years ago involving the World Trade Center, and I think the people that caused the unpleasantness might have said something like that before things got unpleasant.

Imagine if the killer had been a member of the World Church of the Creator, and had been yelling, "Heil Hitler" while shooting people in a mall. Do you suppose that newspapers would have left out that little detail? I rather doubt it.

No more unarmed shopping for me. Yes, he was probably just mentally ill, and fixated on religion as his justification for killing people, and not an al-Qaeda operative. But it makes me wonder if a mass murderer did something similar, and was an al-Qaeda operative, if we would be allowed to know that.

Thanks to Classical Values for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATE: This report from KSL TV in Salt Lake City claims that this is incorrect:

The Salt Lake Police Department always expects rumors when something big like last week's shooting happens. We heard a big one. It was even spread by Congressman Chris Cannon on the Doug Wright show this morning.

Congressman Chris Cannon: "We go from a kid shouting Allah Akbar as he shoots people in Trolley Square."

Was 18-year-old Suljmen Talovic yelling, "Allah Akbar, God is Great," while shooting people? KSL found out: no.

Robin Snyder/SLCPD: "We have no indication he was yelling anything of that nature at all."

Cannon's spokesperson said he heard it on Fox cable news. It could have started with a video from inside Trolley Square. You hear yelling, but if you listen closely, it's the off-duty police officer, Kenneth Hammond, yelling "Ogden Police Department," or OPD.

Does anyone have the video? It must be extremely poor audio if "Ogden Police Department" sounds like "Allah Akbar."

Interesting Commentary By A Virginia Tech Student

What makes it especially interesting is the date--last August:

On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my graduate-level class was evacuated from the Squires Student Center. We were interrupted in class and not informed of anything other than the following words: "You need to get out of the building."

Upon exiting the classroom, we were met at the doors leading outside by two armor-clad policemen with fully automatic weapons, plus their side arms. Once outside, there were several more officers with either fully automatic rifles and pump shotguns, and policemen running down the street, pistols drawn.

It was at this time that I realized that I had no viable means of protecting myself.

Please realize that I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia, and do so on a regular basis. However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech's student policy, which makes possession of a handgun an expellable offense, but not a prosecutable crime.

I had entrusted my safety, and the safety of others to the police. In light of this, there are a few things I wish to point out.

First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.

Second, I considered bringing my gun with me to campus, but did not due to the obvious risk of losing my graduate career, which is ridiculous because had I been shot and killed, there would have been no graduate career for me anyway.

Third, and most important, I am trained and able to carry a concealed handgun almost anywhere in Virginia and other states that have reciprocity with Virginia, but cannot carry where I spend more time than anywhere else because, somehow, I become a threat to others when I cross from the town of Blacksburg onto Virginia Tech's campus.

Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.

That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.

I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, "I would feel safer if you had your gun."

The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.

Killer Was Legal Resident

I was hoping that the first reports--that he was here on a student visa--were correct, because that would have made his purchases illegal. If illegal, there might be some hope of figuring out to prevent these in the future. But this news report indicates otherwise:

He is Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien of the United States, as first reported by ABC News.

Cho is a South Korean national, a Virginia Tech senior majoring in English and the man who killed 33 people — inlcuding himself — on the Virginia Tech campus Monday.

Sources tell ABC News that Cho killed two people in a dorm room, returned to his own dorm room where he re-armed and left a "disturbing note" before entering a classroom building on the other side of campus to continue his rampage.

Cho's identity has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials.

"Lab results confirm that one of the two weapons seized in Norris Hall was used in both shootings," Virigina Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said at a press conference Tuesday morning.

At this time, police are not looking for a second shooter, however, they did not rule out the possibility that an accomplice may have been involved. Sources say Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Witnesses had told authorities that the shooter was carrying a backpack. Police also said this morning that Cho had a .22 caliber pistol. Sections of chain similar to those used to lock the main doors at Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting that left 31 dead, were also found inside a Virginia Tech dormitory, sources confirmed to ABC News.

The first murders, while horrifying, are at least in the range of normal human behavior. He was angry about being jilted, and murdered his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. But chaining the doors shut on classrooms and murdering everyone inside two hours later? This is just incomprehensibly evil.

He left a note. I would be curious to read what it says.

UPDATE: I notice that he was living in the dorms--and thus his possession of the handguns violated the Virginia Tech rules about having guns on campus. Pretty clearly, this didn't stop him from doing so.

This is one of those relatively rare cases where there seems to be no change to the law that could have prevented this except a complete ban on handgun ownership--and that is simply not possible. Eliminating the "no guns" rule of Virginia Tech might have made a difference, but I would not hold out a high probability for this.

Preventing Massacres

There are no perfect solutions. Yes, as I mentioned earlier today, Virginia Tech's ban on concealed license holders being armed on campus meant that there was no chance that any of the killer's victims could shoot back. What would happen if such a law had not been in place? Most of the students, being under 21, are not eligible for carry permits. But most of the grad students, most of the staff, and pretty much all of the faculty would be eligible.

I know more than a few faculty, either full-time or adjuncts at various colleges around the country who have carry permits. In those states where the laws allows it, some of them carry on campus. Many of the others would do so, at least when teaching night classes.

Would this have prevented this tragedy? It's hard to say. In most states, about 3-5% of the population eventually get a concealed carry permit. A few carry all the time; some carry frequently; a few carry very seldom. I would not say that there was a strong chance that repealing Virginia Tech's rule, and similar ones around the country, would make a big difference. But it would make a big difference to anyone who survived because one victim could fight back!

Texas state rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp became a vigorous advocate of concealed carry because she sat in a Luby's, watching a monster murder her father and mother. Suzanna had been carrying a handgun--illegally, because Texas law did not allow it--for some time. When she walked into that Luby's for lunch, she wasn't carrying--too afraid that she might get arrested. She was in a position to shoot and save lives that day--but the law discouraged her.

At Standard Gravure Printing Plant in Memphis, Tennessee, in a celebrated mass murder in 1989, one of the victims was also illegally carrying a handgun--because Tennessee did not yet make provision for her to obtain a permit. Because she was breaking the law, she delayed pulling her gun until it was too late--and another opportunity to stop a murder spree early on was lost.

At Pearl High School, in Mississippi, the assistant principal brought an end to Luke Woodham's murders by retrieving a pistol from his vehicle. Similarly, a student at Appalachian Law School stopped another mass murder by retrieving a gun from his car.

UPDATE: A reminder: if someone commits mass murder with a weapon other than a gun, the national news media usually ignore it. For example, Hector Escudero started a fire at a casino in Puerto Rico in December 1987 as part of labor union activism, and killed 96 people. Julio Gonzalez threw $1 worth of gasoline into an illegal night club in New York City in April 1990 to get back at his girlfriend, and killed 87 people. These stories received almost no national news coverage at the time--while mass murders that were substantially smaller received vastly more coverage. Why? Gonzalez and Escudero's crimes didn't advance the cause of gun control. You can read my paper that was published by the Journal of Mass Media Ethics here for an examination of the role that excessive media coverage played in causing at least one of the mass murders of that era.

UPDATE 2: I sure hope someone is thinking long and hard about this today:

A Virginia Tech official in 2006 praised the defeat of a proposal to allow students with state-issued concealed handgun permits to carry their handguns on college campuses in Virginia. At least 30 unarmed students were killed on the VA Tech campus Monday morning by a single gunman.

Virginia House Bill 1572 was proposed in 2005 by Shenandoah County, Va., Republican Del. Todd Gilbert after a VA Tech student with a state-issued concealed handgun permit was arrested and charged only with "unlawfully" carrying a handgun on campus. The bill would have prohibited state universities in Virginia from enacting "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."

After the proposal died in the state's House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety, The Roanoke Times quoted VA Tech spokesman Larry Hincker as celebrating the defeat of the bill.

"I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions," Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, "because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Well I'm sure that they did feel safe. They just weren't safe. Would this law change have solved the problem? It is really hard to say. Perhaps none of the victims would have had carry permits; perhaps none would have carried on campus; perhaps none of those who had permits and were actually carrying would have been in the line of fire. But pretty clearly, keeping it unlawful didn't help the 32 people murdered today.

Michelle Malkin publishes an email from a student who survived--and it is a reminder that sitting in fear is less effective than doing something:

It was just a regular day in class; the door was open and we heard a pop-pop-popping noise. Sounded like some kind of construction but it was getting disruptive so we went to close the door, and one of the girls stepped out in the hallway to see what it was. She saw the gun and ran back inside the room and slammed the door shut and we all got down on the floor.

We heard pretty much continuous shooting for the next minute or so, and I said, "Shouldn't we barricade the door," because we were sitting ducks with no way out inside that room if he opened the door. A couple more people floated the idea that "We need to barricade the door, NOW." But I was too scared to even move, much less move the teacher's desk.

Finally one of the guys in the front of the classroom was brave enough to get up and move the desk in front of the door to prevent outside entry. About twenty seconds later, the shooter rattled the doorknob trying to get in. When he couldn't get in he fired two shots through the door (single solid piece of wood) and left. We heard him go in to 206 (the room across the hall) and shoot the people in that room. If we hadn't put the barricade up when we did, I and all my classmates would be dead.