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Mods should please move this or /dev/nul this thread if it is too off-topic. Also, given that VPI is a technical/engineering school, there may be members of the DefCon community with friends or family there... out of respect for them and their grief this may be too soon to discuss the following points. I again defer to the wisdom of the group and the mods with respect to thread locking/moving/etc.
This unspeakable tragedy has touched the nation and many, many families. Two of my cousins actually attended VPI as undergrads and one other did some grad work there. In my immediate reaction to the news, I placed a panicked call to one of my Aunts, forgetting in that moment that her son had left the university a couple years back to finish things out in colorado... so troubling was the incident that i lost my head for an instant. I feel many of us may have similarly experienced cognitive failure when the headlines came across.
Already there are rumors and uncorroborated reports being discussed in the media. If anyone has reliable sources that can confirm/deny/dispute things that are being reported, please feel free to post them here. Some points that I have read (and which bear directly on certain themes that our community often discusses) are as follows...
1. these horrible shootings took place in two disparate incidents, separated somewhat significantly in terms of time and distance. what started as possibly just a domestic-type matter in a dorm building (where two people were fatally shot) was followed (something like two hours later) by the killings in a science/classroom building elsewhere on campus. what questions does this raise pertaining to institutional building and grounds security and response to incidents in progress? we've discussed the boston police/ATF response to the Aqua Teen scare and the points made by all participants shed a great deal of light on how first responders and law enforcement brass must make snap decisions. can similar discussion be had about this?
2. the shooter was armed with two handguns, neither one particularly powerful. i've read reports of a .22 and a 9mm. at least one of these weapons may have been bought legally (although in the "comments" sections underneath many news articles i've seen readers stating that this individual, since he was not a US citizen, should not have been able to legally acquire the weapons... breakdown in dealers following regs? can permanent residents get standard driver's licenses?) but all of this has not, i'm disheartened to say, prevented the almost immediate appearance of press releases and editorials calling for "stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss" and bemoaning "how easy it is for an individual to get powerful weapons in our country... we've done nothing as a country to end gun violence in our schools and communities. If anything, we've made it easier to access powerful weapons."
i would welcome anyone's thoughts on this awful tragedy, correction of misreported facts, analysis of the physical security themes that are in play, and any predictions for the larger overall reaction which may come out of this terrible event.
my heart goes out to all who were touched directly by this violence and death, particularly the family and friends of Liviu Librescu, the professor who gave his own life barricading his classroom door so that students had a chance to escape. please read the wikipedia entry that has already appeared regarding this brave and caring man, with all the suffering and death that he already saw and managed to live through (he was a holocaust survivor) he still chose to place himself in harm's way in the hope of protecting others. how many among our citizenry would make that same choice today? i suspect that later some of us may get into debates and questions about "how would you have responded to the shootings if you were there and you were armed?" but it's even harder to ask "would you have confronted this evil in the moment of peril even if you had no defenses whatsoever?"
This unspeakable tragedy has touched the nation and many, many families. Two of my cousins actually attended VPI as undergrads and one other did some grad work there. In my immediate reaction to the news, I placed a panicked call to one of my Aunts, forgetting in that moment that her son had left the university a couple years back to finish things out in colorado... so troubling was the incident that i lost my head for an instant. I feel many of us may have similarly experienced cognitive failure when the headlines came across.
Already there are rumors and uncorroborated reports being discussed in the media. If anyone has reliable sources that can confirm/deny/dispute things that are being reported, please feel free to post them here. Some points that I have read (and which bear directly on certain themes that our community often discusses) are as follows...
1. these horrible shootings took place in two disparate incidents, separated somewhat significantly in terms of time and distance. what started as possibly just a domestic-type matter in a dorm building (where two people were fatally shot) was followed (something like two hours later) by the killings in a science/classroom building elsewhere on campus. what questions does this raise pertaining to institutional building and grounds security and response to incidents in progress? we've discussed the boston police/ATF response to the Aqua Teen scare and the points made by all participants shed a great deal of light on how first responders and law enforcement brass must make snap decisions. can similar discussion be had about this?
2. the shooter was armed with two handguns, neither one particularly powerful. i've read reports of a .22 and a 9mm. at least one of these weapons may have been bought legally (although in the "comments" sections underneath many news articles i've seen readers stating that this individual, since he was not a US citizen, should not have been able to legally acquire the weapons... breakdown in dealers following regs? can permanent residents get standard driver's licenses?) but all of this has not, i'm disheartened to say, prevented the almost immediate appearance of press releases and editorials calling for "stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss" and bemoaning "how easy it is for an individual to get powerful weapons in our country... we've done nothing as a country to end gun violence in our schools and communities. If anything, we've made it easier to access powerful weapons."
i would welcome anyone's thoughts on this awful tragedy, correction of misreported facts, analysis of the physical security themes that are in play, and any predictions for the larger overall reaction which may come out of this terrible event.
my heart goes out to all who were touched directly by this violence and death, particularly the family and friends of Liviu Librescu, the professor who gave his own life barricading his classroom door so that students had a chance to escape. please read the wikipedia entry that has already appeared regarding this brave and caring man, with all the suffering and death that he already saw and managed to live through (he was a holocaust survivor) he still chose to place himself in harm's way in the hope of protecting others. how many among our citizenry would make that same choice today? i suspect that later some of us may get into debates and questions about "how would you have responded to the shootings if you were there and you were armed?" but it's even harder to ask "would you have confronted this evil in the moment of peril even if you had no defenses whatsoever?"
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