Virginia Tech massacre leaves more than 30 dead

"Are Americans reaching a breaking point?"
I'd say this is premature, considering we don't even know if the shooter(s) was American. And even if he was, we don't know his motives. Breaking point? No, not a breaking point. Once every few years a crazy man picks up a gun and goes slaying innocents. It happened in Canada about a year ago. Are Canadians now one year past their breaking point?
If your post means anything, and I'm not sure it does, I guess it means you think that American gripes about the war or inequality are driving people to pick up arms and shoot college kids. If that's what you mean: Shame on you for trying to bend this mass tragedy to your own self-righteous political ends.

So... this reactionary asshole, who's squatting in the White House taking the place of the guys who are legitimately supposed to be living in it instead, hears about a horrible event of random gun-fueled carnage in a Virgina university, and his first public response is to suck up to the NRA and talk about protecting the rights of gun owners rather than focusing his concerns on the dead and the dying and the families of same?!

What. The. Fuck.

Okay, strike that. He's not an asshole. He's a friggin psycho/sociopath. And we have to drive that heartless friggin bastid and all his evil minions out of Washington NOW, not later.

If he was a dog, we'd've already put him down for being rabid by now. But he's not, so we can't. And besides, we wouldn't even really want to do that anyway.

I say, let's frog-march his psycho/sociopathic chimpy ass out of the White House in handcuffs, stat!

i agree but i just dont want these people to take away my guns im a teenager and i havent killed nobody

The freak was here on a Shanghai visa. Where that leaves your (shamefully) off-topic whining about the President and 9/11 is for you to decide.
Perhaps you feel a new blogpost headline stirring: Have Shanghai Visa-Holders Had Enough?????
Or maybe you'll switch teams and go the anti-immigration route: Asian Visa-Holder's Bloodbath.
Whatever, it's a random tragedy, and the most telling thing about it was your childish eagerness to pin it on. . .The US? Revolting.

then here are reasoned, researched, experienced perspectives and discussion. I am listening live on NPR now, only about ten minutes left in the hour. The whole show should be available in real audio by this evening. One of the men had studied records back to 1948 (older than I am at least) and found mass shooters don't have criminal records but do tend to have a record of past mental health problems. That, and they almost always give warning signs leading up to the end slaughter (which they don't expect or desire to survive themselves.)

Nobody including guests, the host or any callers has mentioned movie violence or rap music (or the president) so far -- they are talking about how misguided the media commentary has been, how unrealistic and unthoughtful.

Tuesday Ap 17
10:00 Virginia Tech Shootings

Diane and her guests talk about the latest information on the deadly shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: the university police and administration's handling of the two attacks, what is known about the shooter, and questions from the community and on campuses around the country.
Guests

Fox Butterfield, author and former New York Times reporter (38 years)

Susan Riseling, chief of police for the University of Wisconsin at Madison and vice president at large of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)

Clint Van Zandt, former FBI profiler and author of "Facing Down Evil"

Beverly Amsler, Morning Edition host for NPR member station WVTF in Roanoke, Va. WVTF is a licensee of Virginia Tech University, serving southwestern Virginia, including Blacksburg, Va.

that right after I posted, a woman named Leslie called in all breathless and brought up Don Imus and the culture of violence, said she'd lived overseas and these things didn't happen there (??) but if they DID, people would look to the "underlying social causes."

Now Diane is talking about how "words matter" and can encourage violence, but she doesn't directly blame Don Imus for this horrific crime thank goodness. . . . she is saying it has just been announced the government of South Korea has expressed its formal condolences, because the shooter was a South Korean national. (Should we look to the South Korean culture then, for social cause answers? And isn't that overseas? What point were we making again?)

This korean kid who shot all those people at Virginia Tech, walked into a store about a month ago and bought his glock and ammo for $571, using a credit card. There was a one minute background check, he was asked sixteen questions (do you have a criminal record? ever used drugs? .etc) He answered no to all questions, and walked right out with his glock pistol and ammo.

This was Virginia where there is no waiting period. If this was new york state or some other states, there is a six month waiting period. But you get conservative states like Virginia and Texas, and they think any waiting period is un-american.

This kid had emotional problems evidently. Was going through a crisis. If there had proper evaluations done, if there had been a proper waiting period, he wouldn't have had that gun yesterday. Or the high powered gun magazines he used. 32 people might well still be alive today.

This should be a campaign issue. Yet gun control laws are now something democrats are not supposed to support if they want to win in red states. If Jim Webb had supported waiting periods or other gun control laws, he might have lost his senate race in virginia. So its either we don't advocate gun control in those states or we lose? This isn't right.

We have the right to take drugs too under the Constitution. But that doesn't mean that we can't have restrictons on use and sale of the stronger of those drugs. Having prescriptions, requiring the approval of a qualified professional, and strictly limiting the amount of drugs dispensed, is done all the time. Yet any restrictions on gun purchases is called un-american by some?

So this person can buy as many glock pistols as he wants, while he can't take as much valium or morphine as he wants. Can you see the problem? Here was a guy who had mental issues, who had been referred to a mental facility after women complained of him stalking them. Yet he could buy not one but two high power pistols, because conservative lawmakers in virginia refuse to put any kind of limits on who can buy them and how many they can buy, as they do prescription drugs? More people might be alive today if there had been a limit of one gun per citizen. He would not have been able to buy that second pistol. Or if there had been a waiting period long enough before any purchase was made so that there was time to thorougly check his medical and legal history.

Things you can do, and a doctor does, before dispensing strong narcotic drugs to patients. But things not done to young people buying guns. Its not right.