As more information comes from what I should be dubbing the "Hokie Minh Disaster", I naturally have more insight. Here's some of it.
- Mark Steyn takes aim here at asking why nobody risked their own life to stop Cho, especially when it became clear that said life was likely forfeit anyways:
But with the two people who hadn't been shot, with their help, we helped to barricade the door to prevent him from coming back in. ... Then he had come back after firing shots in other classrooms and he proceeded to shoot the door, which was wooden, so bullets were hitting the door and almost coming through door."
- Just to toot my own horn, my previous posts on the subject have been candidates for further discussion. Odd Thoughts thinks its "repugnant" that I (correctly) believed the killer was a foreigner. And how dare I borrow the Drudge Report's headlines?. Asian Wild Rose also linked to my initial post. I would like to remind everyone that said initial post has a more detailed followup where I generalize Koreans specifically. Worth the read!
- Early rumours are that Cho's visa is a phoney, but I've seen nothing online to collaborate this.
- CNN earlier today reported that Cho's guns were obtained because his now well publicized mental health history was kept from the gun shop due to privacy laws. The best reference I can find is this link stating:
The woman declined to press charges, and the campus police referred the case to the disciplinary system of the university, Chief Wendell Flinchum said. Mr. Cho’s disciplinary record was not released because of privacy laws. The associate vice president for student affairs, Edward F. D. Spencer, said it would not be unusual if no disciplinary action had been taken in such a case. On Dec. 12, a second woman asked the police to put a stop to Mr. Cho’s instant messages to her. She, too, declined to press charges.
It's still an interesting take on the subject, with privacy laws being such weird things these days. [like how the federal privacy comissioner had no problem with Edmonton Police and a private company teaming up to violate your privacy rights? -ed] - Today NBC received photos, video, and writings from Cho Seung-Hui showing him in various threatening poses with guns. How come NBC got this within 2 days, and I once emailed a letter from Dallas, TX to Calgary that took almost 6 months?
- One of the "disturbing" images of Cho can be found here. It's still nowhere near as dangerous and scary as the "here's me with guns" photos that this guy's Yahoo profile used to have. His were assault weapons, not handguns. And he'd already been in jail for violent offenses!
- Early bonus points go to, surprise surprise, Ann Coulter, who has a new column about the tragedy (to be linked to at a later date when its archived and if I remember to do so), where she notes:
But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.
Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy — in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.
It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing — as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter. - This isn't Virginia related, but don't you think Prime Minister Harper could have chosen a better time to announce this?
- What's worse? That this Quebec victim was probably a soft separatist, or that the Bloc is trying to use her death to drum up support for the gun registry?
- Even if the system had caught Cho in time, liberals are madly working to ensure that the next guy gets his chance to gun some people down.
- Finally, is this really the worse massacre in U.S. history? Wikipedia itself calls the Bath School Disaster as the "deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history". Since the body count is higher than Virginia Tech, not sure how CNN can claim the latter as the worst in the span of the United States. (Bonus line: when I proposed everybody carrying guns, a guy at work yesterday said it would be worse off if we became "like the Wild West". Until, of course, I noted that the "Wild West" was part of American history, and this is the "worst incident in U.S. history, so we would be far better off in said "Wild West").
- If you want a true "WTF" sort of moment, in 1982 an off duty police officer killed 57 people. Who? Where? Woo Bum-kon: in Seoul, South Korea. ("Facetious comment that's probably a good idea" of the day: a Wikipedian proposes the category "Spree shooters of Korean descent")
