Mass Murder by Lone Gunman at VA Tech

UPDATED: SCROLL: Chicago Tribune reporting the shooter is a Chinese National, here in the United States on a student visa. 

UPDATE: Killer was not a Chinese national. He was Korean, resident alien, NATIVE SOUTH KOREAN CHO SEUNG -HUI

Sketchy details on the 22  32 dead at VA Tech, all shot by a supposed lone gunman. Reports say the gunman is dead but I saw a picture of the "suspect" on the ground being handcuffed. [UPDATE: GUNMAN CONFIRMED DEAD, the guy in the picture may have been taken for questioning and released] The suspect is "Asian." The victims were lined up and shot execution style. Anybody got a name?

VA Tech is basically a U.S. Army Military recruiting school.

There have been two bomb threats at VA Tech in the last two weeks. We do not know if these are related.

By NRVNews    
Friday, April 13, 2007  Virginia Tech is offering a $5,000 reward related to the two recent bomb threats on campus.

The reward will be given for information or leads leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in either bomb threat incidents occurring April 1 or April 13.

Information should be directed to Virginia Tech Police at 232-TIPP (8477).

Virginia Tech Police, in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, continue to investigate both incidents.

UPDATE: What they know so far from ABC NEWS. Anybody got a name?

At least 25 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass killing on a college campus in American history -- and the death toll may rise.

Police at Virginia Tech say that the shootings happened at a dormitory and a classroom on opposite sides of the university campus in Blacksburg, Va.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said that one person was killed in the first shooting, just after 7 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a large dormitory. Flinchum said that at least 20 more people were killed in a later shooting at Norris Hall, an academic building.

Flinchum said the gunman was dead, but wouldn't say whether the shooter killed himself. The gunman, whose identity has not been released, is among the dead.

ABC News confirms that there were two separate bomb threats at Virginia Tech that targeted engineering buildings. The first was directed at Torgersen Hall, while the second was directed at multiple engineering buildings. Students and staff were evacuated, and the university had offered a $5000 reward for information into the threats.

Not all of the students involved in the shootings are dead. Two local hospitals are reporting treating 21 people.

University president Charles Steger said that police have not officially tied together the two shootings. Steger described today's events as an incident of "tragic proportions," and said, "the university is shocked and horrified that this would befall us."

The campus is closed today and classed are cancelled today and tomorrow. Families seeking to reunite with their children have been directed by the unversity to the Inn at Virginia Tech.

UPDATE: 32 dead

At Montgomery Regional Hospital  17 patients - 4 patients critical and in surgery
At New River Valley Medical Center 5 patients - 4 stable, 1 critical
At Carilion Roanoke Memorial - 3 patients, all criticalAt Lewis Gale Hospital - 5 patients, including one faculty member.

Total 30 wounded, 8 critical.

UPDATE: Gunman chained the door shut to the building where he killed his victims. Premeditation. Clearly this is a military type shooting. 50 people shot, some of the moving. 32 dead as of now. This guy has military training. The high kill rate is off the charts for one person doing the shooting at moving targets.

There were two shootings.

The first shooting took place is Johnston Hall (28). The second was in shottings took place in Norris (132) ~ 2 hours later. Note how large a distance had to be traversed by the shooter. Check out the map

More terrible proof of why we need the second amendment. Disarm the people and we are sheep to slaughter. If someone had a gun on them they could have taken out this animal. You will never stop killers from getting guns, why disarm the folks that could stop them?  Gun control is for lemmings.

Sounds of gunfire caught on camera cell phone video from the scene of the Virginia Tech campus shooting.

UPDATE: The Collegiate Times, an independent student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community, has ongoing updates here

UPDATE 3:43pm: New info from ABC News;

Law enforcement officials tell ABC News they believe there was a single gunman, firing at least two 9mm semi-automatic pistols. They said he may have been wearing a bulletproof vest.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said that one person was killed in the first shooting, which occurred just after 7 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a large dormitory. Flinchum said that at least 20 more people were killed at Norris Hall, an academic building. At least 21 injured students were admitted to a local hospital.

Anyone have the name yet of the "young, Asian man?"

UPDATE: Look for plenty of blame but this post over at the Free Republic is most disturbing. hat tip EJO

VA Tech official praised defeat of student self-defense proposal in 2006
Posted by Coleus

One News Now ^ | 04.16.07 | Jeff Johnson
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 20 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...

UPDATE 5:48 pm: 33 dead. The shooter is dead. Why not release his name? The delay is suspect. Are they notifying the family? /sarc tag

The latest meme making the rounds is that shooter was from Radford University and that he went  to VT to shoot his girlfriend.  Then went to engineering bldg. What bullshit.  Next they'll start circulating the " mentally unstable" meme. You don't chain the doors shut if you are merely looking to hurt your girlfriend. CHAINED THE DOORS SO THAT NO ONE CAN GET OUT. That is  premeditation

Flopping Aces has an excellent post here. Many updates. He names a potential shooter as well.

UPDATE: Bill O'Reilly is reporting the shooter is a Chinese National, here in the United States on a student visa with no known terror ties (they sure make that determination fast, don't they?) Still nameless. O'Reilly's source is the Chicago Sun-Times

Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus’ security response, the source said.

The exits to the buildings where the shootings occurred were chained by the shooter, the source said. More here

Excellent editorial over at Seraphic Secret hatip tip Jeramayakovka

There are 32 confirmed dead at Virginia Tech, 28 wounded.

I am not including the killer in this count, and I do not undertstand why some news sources include the murderer with his victims. This is the height of moral equivalence. It makes me sick.

Some news sources are desribing this as a tragedy.

It is an atrocity.

Again, it seems to us that journalists, so many of them schooled in post-modern ethics, have so debased language that they have no idea how to distinguish between a natural tragedy, such as a hurricane or a tsunami, and a massacre, planned and carried out by an evil man; thus an engineered atrocity.

Words matter.....

UPDATE: Killer was not a Chinese national. He was Korean, a resident alien, native  South Korean CHO SEUNG -HUI.

UPDATE: Judith Klingoffer, History News :

AS SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER YET AGAIN

I know I am going to get hate mail and I may be rushing to judgment. But it all seems to follow such a familiar pattern. Terrified students lined up against the wall of their classroom and shot, execution-style. Once again, this time in a campus filled with young men and women military age, a lone bully seemed to have been able to go on a rampage without anyone trying to actively stop him. What did the students and faculty do? They either cowered behind furniture or locked their door. He, of course, went on to shoot the students next door. Once again, as Bill Bennett noted, heavily armed men were seen swarming OUTSIDE assessing the situation!

As this murder spree took place on Holocaust memorial day, it is not be surprising that the one man who said "Never again" was a 76 year old professor, a holocaust survivor.

He did the best he could, blocked the door with his body and told his students to flee. Of course, it would have been better if had he told them to attack.

You think I am too harsh? believe it or not, Mahatma Gandhi shared my view. Per chance, I as reading Mohandas yesterday and it included his response to the information that Hindu homes had been looted in Sharanpur in Western UP, an a housewife assaulted without the local Hindus putting up a fight. He emphasized that he was not asking Indians to respond with absolute non violence to villainy, or against "thieves, robbers or . . . nations that may invade India. He added:

 

As a Hindu I am more ashamed of Hindu couardice that I am angry at the Mussulman bullying. . . . Where there are cowards, there will always be bullies."

Of course, standing up to bullies is no longer the expected even of trained fighters. How can one expect young people at a university to behave more courageously than British marines confronting Iranian bullies? We better. For as Gandhi expected, in the current atmosphere bullies are multiplying and the price of continuing to go as sheep to slaughter is getting higher and higher by the day.

MUST READ:  On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs

Comments

[AJStrata]

Pamela,

I attend VA Tech and it is not a military school (you be thinking of VMI - VA Military Academy). Tech does have a large ROTC program.

Cheers, AJStrata

[Thomas Carney]

VA Tech is a heavy duty technical school and, like most college campuses, has no real means of enforcing "NO GUNS" policies on their campuses other than rules. Rules are utterly useless if there is no swift and sure means of enforcing them.

I'm willing to bet that this "Asian" individual is also a Muslim. If not, this whole situation has told terrorist groups that American college campuses are PRIME SPOTS for terror.

Last year the University of Utah had a disagreement with Utah's Attorney General over "Concealed Carry" on campus. The university insisted it had a right to restrict any gun possession on campus and the Attorney General said that since the school was state property, state law counted.

A few years ago, an African man started shooting at University of Virginia's Law School. It was mentioned that the assailant was wrestled to the ground by two male students. What was NOT MENTIONED in ANY MEDIA OUTLET was the fact that THE TWO MALE STUDENTS HAD _CONCEALED CARRY PERMITS_ AND PULLED THEIR WEAPONS TO FORCE THE ASSAILANT TO SURRENDER!!!!!

The ONLY thing that will stop a lunatic assailant with a gun is another gun.

[Pamela Geller]

VT IS VIEWED AS A MILITARY COLLEGE BY THE ARMY ROTC ON THE CAMPUS OF VT AND WAS ONE DURING WW11, AND IS ONE OF THE LARGEST RECRUITING SOURCES FOR MILITARY INTELLIGENCE CANDIDATES IN THE USA, SEE VT ROTC ONLINE INFO BELOW.

BILL WARNER
WWW.WBIPI.COM



Virginia Tech was the top performing Senior Military College during the 2006 Leader Development Assessment Course (LDAC).

http://www.armyrotc.vt.edu/

[biorabbi]

Pam, the Asian who appears to be handcuffed looks very much alive in that picture. I wonder if that picture shows the suspect or could it have been somebody else. Also, 32 kids from a lone gunman... sounds like a lot. He put his 'vest' on, shot over sixty people; this sounds planned. Sick.

[Steve Harkonnen]

I hope and pray that my neighbor's daughter is ok. She is at Tech and is in her third or fourth year. Blacksburg is only about an hour due south of where I live.

[Josef K]

Why do I feel al Qaeda was involved?

And you know something if they were, it'd be the rude & lethal wake up call this country sadly and tragically needed.

[Robert4]

i wonder If any moslems were killed. school shootings are historically done by christians and atheists and it might be an "anti-jihadi" gone violent?

[Pamela Geller]

Do not feed the libtarded troll from Columbia University (where else?)

[AubreyJ]

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims... their families and friends.

This is a sad/tragic day for our country...
AubreyJ.........

[Lawrence]

Whoah!... not sure where all this "military type shooting" is coming from.

First: All Universities with ROTC programs are military recruiting schools. So this tells us nothing.

Second: The military doesn't teach students to shoot like this. I never learned to shoot like this while in the military. My real marksmanship skills, shooting at moving targets, etc, I learned outside the military. So again this tells us nothing about the guy.

Third: Does it speak of premeditation? Certainly.

But... what you might really be alluding to is "Para-military" training, such as one might get while attending a terrorist training camp.

[Lawrence]

Posted by: Josef K: "...school shootings are historically done by christians and atheists and it might be an "anti-jihadi" gone violent?"

Whether in jest, or not...

Please name one violent school shooting incident of this type attributed to an honest-to-goodness true-believing Christian?

[Pamela Geller]

Lawrence, That wasn't Josef! It was the leftarded troll from Columbia University.

He's like a pinworm. Got any vermox?

[Thomas Carney]

The man who perpetrated this massacre knew full well that the students and staff at VA Tech were unarmed and that the university's rules and regs would have stopped nearly all the people on campus from stopping him.

The man who perpetrated this massacre was a coward, pure and simple and he knew he was going after helpless sheep.

The man who perpetrated this massacre knew only one thing could stop him: an armed individual.

Talk about the perfect setup.

Colleges and universities can write tougher rules about not having guns on campus, but it won't stop these terrorists.

Virginia has an open carry law. Virginia has a shall issue concealed carry law. Virginia has a "Castle Doctrine" law. But all of these laws are useless in places where guns are banned.

Virginians need to have the right to carry unabridged everywhere in Virginia.

Pamela was absolutely right when she wrote that gun control is for lemmings.

Up here in Loudoun County in the mountains darned near EVERYONE is armed. We have a very low crime here. The criminals know we're armed. They don't come this way. They will undoubtedly get their $h1t blown away. I won't hesitate to kill a burglar in my house.

[Josef K]

1) Pamela, thanks - you're one of my heroes!!!

2) Sounds like it was two shootings at one campus at one time. Smells like pros at work. Pros like al Qaeda.

[gto7]

Well, I want to know if this/these shooters was/were Moslem.

This is the list so far:

1. Seattle Jewish Federation Shooting last summer-- 1 killed 5 wounded--shooter is Moslem shouting out, "I am angry with Israel" as he shoots up these defenseless women.

2. Utah Mall Shooting-- 5 dead
Shooter was an 18 yr. old Bosian Moslem

3. NC University-- 10 dead from a SUV plowing them down. Driver--radical Moslem shouting out his beliefs re: Israel to the judge.

4. VA TECH SHOOTING--33 dead possible two shooters using military tactics--Are they Moslem? Will the lame stream media actually ask the question? Doubt it!

And finally, you know what the media focuses on? Security! Why didn't
you (University) lock down the school fast enough?

My question to the media is: Why don't you ask the real tough questions? Cowards!

[Youssef]

NOPE, DID NOT WANT TO SAY TERROR TRAINING CAMP, YET !

NEED THE NAME !

I SHOOT A LOT WITH HANDGUNS, 9MM SEMI AND .38 REVOLVER, NO WAY TO DO THIS MUCH DAMAGE, ON THE RUN, WITHOUT BEING A COLD HANDED MARKSMAN.

62 PEOPLE SHOT AND 32 DEAD AND SOME ON THE WAY OUT (30 IN HOSPITALS), THIS HAS TO BE HOLLOW POINT AMMO (HIGH KILL RATE) FROM WHAT WOULD BE TWO 9MM HANDGUNS WITH AT LEAST A 15 ROUND CLIP (POLICE CLIPS ARE 15) AND BACK UP AMMO CLIPS.

IF 62 STUDENTS ARE SHOT AT AND 62 ARE HIT AND 32 OF THEM ARE DEAD AND OTHERS ARE CRITICAL, THIS GUY HAD MILITARY TRAINING OF SOME SORT WAY BEYOND TARIK DOWN THE STREET (HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE ONLY IN HIS 20'S).

NO ONE CAN DO THIS KIND OF HANDGUN SHOOTING WITH SUCH DEADLY EFFECT WITHOUT A LOT OF TRAINING, THESE PEOPLE WERE MOVING TARGETS, NOT STATIONARY PAPER TARGETS.

[SpamIam]

Ah, but Youssef, the news is telling us that the victims weren't on the run. They were lined up and shot at arm's length, locked in their classrooms with nowhere to run to. And plain old bullets will kill you just as dead at that range. That doesn't require much training. And I can fit at least a dozen 7 round magazines in a jacket pocket, so the high capacity thing doesn't play into it either.

So let's invoke the 24 hour rule and wait until some real info gets out and not rumor. It's too soon to call SJS or anything else.

[--mdd--]

Josef K- "

Why do I feel al Qaeda was involved?

And you know something if they were, it'd be the rude & lethal wake up call this country sadly and tragically needed."
---
Unfortunatlly Josef, if Rosie and her ilk put their spin on this, they will tell us that it was because the school was a military (all bad in their eyes) school and was recuting more for Dubya's killing machine. You know they think that there is only one terrorist in the world, GWB.

[rocketsbrain]

Curt at Flopping Aces is following this closely and has this additional info.

RBT

*****

UPDATE XV 1500hrs PST

A poster at FR put up the name James Kim, a 2006 VT grad, as the shooter. It's unverified and the post has since been removed so we have no idea if this is just a prank or not, take it for what it's worth. The poster did attach a supposed picture of him also with a girl. Won't put that up until we verify this info.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/04/16/massacre-in-virginia/index.html

[Unixxstar]

As an American I sympathize with the families who have lost loved ones, and those who were injured. As a gun-owning American, I fear this will be used as an excuse for more gun laws. Just a while ago I heard Wolf Ditzer recite that it was a "semi-automatic" weapon. Well, hell, yeah, Wolf, you moron. ALL LEGAL weapons are semi-automatic including my shotgun.

But all most of the public will hear is the phrase "semi-automatic".

I fully agree with Pamela, and told my wife - now look where all their gun restrictions on campus have gotten us. The "campus policies" didn't stop the gunman from entering, but they sure prevented anyone from taking him out early, didn't they?

Who knows how many lives COULD have been saved, had someone been armed and ready.

[Thomas Carney]

Unixxstar: "Wolf Ditzer" is too good for that dumb bastich. During the DC sniper days, after the shooting at the Home Depot near Seven Corners, Virginia, not far from where I used to work, Ditzer was exclaiming that he had a witness to what the shooter was using: an AKM-74.

I called CNN and told them that Wolf Dumbshit was flat out wrong. A '74 fires a 5.45mm round while the round that the sniper was using was a 5.56mm round, a .223 Remington. The person at CNN was incredulous that someone would know more about something than Wolf Blitzer.

Mainstream news is disgusting.

[Josef K]

1) I could care less for Rosie O'Donnell and her ilk. The rest of us will get the memo.

2) Looks to me the MSM is in full MainSPINStream mode.

[chsw]

This incident will always be compared to the University of Texas campus tower incident of 1966. However, that gunman was crazy from a brain tumor. Moreover, he was shot dead by a combination of police and FELLOW STUDENTS who pulled rifles from their car trunks and started shooting back in self-defense.

chsw

[Harcourt Fenton]

Before everyone here starts looking ridiculous, how about waiting until the identity of the murderer is known. He is said to be a Chinese national on a student visa. He is also said to be motivated by revenge for a love affair gone bad, not by the 12th Imam.

And Atlas, I'm a firm supporter of the 2nd Amendment, but that doesn't mean that kids in a Virginia college (or high schools in New York City for that matter) should be carrying automatic weapons. It also doesn't mean that a gun store owner should be selling weapons to a kid with a student visa, whether he is from Jihadist Saudi Arabia or Communist China. Why is it so antithetical to the Second Amendment to have at least as much regulation for gun ownership as we have for car ownership, presciption drugs and cigarette smoking? Do you think that every non-Jewish kid in Gaza and Judea/Samaria should be allowed to carry weapons? I sure don't. Even Texas makes you check your weapon when you enter a bar. To boot, there were plenty of killings in the gold rush west when everyone carried a firearm; instead of "shooting the bird" like we do in New York, they just shot.

The fact is that this degenerate wasn't stopped despite the fact that the first two killings occurred a FULL TWO HOURS before he killed the additional 30+ kids. Plenty of time for well-armed SWAT teams to do their thing. Plenty of time for evacuations. VA Tech and the police failed these victims, not the Second Amendment. The gun store owner who sold this guest alien two weapons, a bullet proof vest and rounds and rounds of ammo has some 'splainin to do.

[Mega]

Virginia is a CCW state. I live down the block from the NRA headquarters here; you can't get much more friendly to law-abiding gun owners than VA. Unfortunately, our extensive arms rights in VA didn't do any good this time. I'm withholding judgment on this whole thing. I have a strong feeling this one is not the global Jihad on the move; it just doesn't fit the profile. Sick as it is, I believe this one is the love interest gone sour model. Let's wait and see. One thing's for sure - CAIR already has the press release written about Islamophobia and people rushing to judgment, and is aching to release it. Let's not feed the ravenous CAIR beast quite yet. If it does turn out to be the Jihad, this will inflict a massive body blow on Islam's interests and goals in this country, but I just don't think it's related this time.

[OrangeEnt]

Harcourt,

No one is saying that "kids" should be given automatic weapons. Remember, most of the students there are adults, not children. Is there any evidence that the killer purchased his guns legally? Did he get them from a gunstore or perhaps, more likely, the street?

I don't think that asking someone to check their guns at the door is the same as the government gathering information about those of us who buy guns. Owning firearms is a pre-existing right, owning and driving a car is not. The government has no business knowing who owns guns or anything else about them. We can already disarm felons and make sure they remain unarmed if we want to.

Why would anyone trust the government to do nothing with registration information? If Bush is Hitler, surely he doesn't need to know whether I own guns or not.

Those who hate our right to own guns will use anything they can to denigrate us and take away our rights. After an event like this, we need to be more vigilant than ever.

[Harcourt Fenton]

Orange -

I respectfully disagree. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is not to arm to oppose our leaders; it recognizes a general right of a citizen class to bear arms that was relatively a new concept - arms had historically been reserved for the military class in Europe. Just because it is in the Constitution, doesn't mean it cannot be monitored or regulated - in fact, the 2nd Amendment speaks of a "well regulated" Militia; it doesn't say, as in the 1st Amendment, that "Congress shall make no law" respecting the same. In fact, Congress does have certain powers to circumscribe our rights under the Constitution - the Patriot Act is a case in point, as are certain specific restrictions on our rights to publish and be secure in our persons, papers, etc.

The government already has plenty of information about anyone it wants to obtain information on. Everyone's financial information, which is about as personal as it gets, is gathered by the government pursuant to laws enacted by the representatives of the People. In particular situations, the government has the right to secretly monitor the lives of individuals, to wiretap their phones and examine, among other things, if they possess firearms or drugs or a car.

I would also disagree that driving a car is not a similar pre-existing right. Driving is derived from the right to ride a horse - it is such a basic uncontested right that the Founders would never have thought it necessary to protect such right in the series of Amendments they added to the Constitution restricting the law-making power of the government. Also, fishing is probably a more basic right than gun owning, but, it too, is subject to licensure and regulation.

Finally, I for one, don't think Bush is Hitler. In fact, I don't even think that Ahmadikewhad is Hitler (yet). Among other things, Hitler controlled the entire professional military force of Germany; he rolled over arms-bearing nations such as Poland, France and Czechoslovakia without much resistance. He caused huge losses to major arms-bearing nations such as Great Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia. Individuals, arms-bearing or not, had very little chance against his juggernaut. Although Germany was a free nation when Hitler came to power, it was a very young democracy with a centuries-long tradition of autocratic rule. Dictatorial power was not an aberration in 1933, it was a relapse to the power structure that had existed prior to 1919. Germany had only been a republic, and a tenuous one at that, for the period from 1919-1933.

All this is to say that we in the United States have a very, very far way to fall to even start to think that our government is out to get us and that democracy doesn't work.

Monitoring who has what guns and what types only makes it harder for terrorist networks to establish themselves in the US. Can anyone buy weapons illegally? Sure, but it is not easy; it is much easier to walk into a Wal-Mart. Will there continue to be criminals who drive without a license and carry a gun without a license? Sure, but when these folks are caught, they get put in jail and get locked up longer. Hunters and people who get licenses to carry for personal protection have nothing to fear from waiting periods or identity checks, unless they are engaged in bad behavior or have criminal records. Yes, it's an inconvenience, but so is going through a metal detector at the airport or being subject to having your briefcase searched when you enter an office building or the subway in New York City. Saying that the government is out to denigrate gun-owners and take away their rights is like saying that the government is out to denigrate car-owners and take away their rights. The denigration occurs from the non-gun-owning public when they see that responsible gun-owners, who know the care it takes to safely keep a firearm, make blanket statements that anyone and everyone should be able to own a gun, that hollow point bullets and machine guns should be available to all, and that any regulation is a denigration.

[Thomas Carney]

I just found out this morning that I KNEW ONE OF THE STUDENTS who was murdered by this sonovabitch yesterday. I will not name her to respect her family's privacy.

She was 19, and I just saw her at Easter. She has one sister and came from a very loving family. She didn't have a mean bone in her body. I have known her parents for 23 years.

I don't like to be hateful, but this bastard

[X: THC]

Question Marks...

"This didn't have to happen", Cho Seung-Hui said, after murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University.

And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn't have to happen, if we'd only listened.

But we never listen.

We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don't try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them.

And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.

Words like "creep", "deranged misfit" and "psycho" devalue this killer's humanity so we don't have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of "how could he have been stopped" are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words "how could he have been listened to" are never considered.

Because we don't want to listen.

We don't want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we're all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don't fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don't care to understand anything about them.

This man who clearly needed help, Cho Seung-Hui, devalued himself so much that he called himself "Question Mark".

There are more "Question Marks" out there. There are millions of them. And if we don't listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more "Question Marks" every day.

Most "Question Marks" don't become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call "normal". They may be someone you know, someone you love.

This "Question Mark" was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.

How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn't fit in, the one in the corner, the one that's different? When all we have to do is listen, before it's too late.

But we won't.

Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.

To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.

And the "Question Marks" will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don't listen.

We never do.

---------------

http://www.x-thc.com