<p>Do you guys know that one of victims was a HOlocaust survivor? That is so sad that he survived Hitler's regime only to be murdered by another psychopath.</p>
<p>I pray for everyone.</p>
<p>He held a door closed while he insisted the children jump from the window and was shot thru the door...maybe he survived the holocaust to save these children.</p>
<p>I'll Pray for the 32 innocent victims.</p>
<p>-Stony Brook University</p>
<p>A song written by two Virginia Tech grads.........</p>
<p>scroll down to "forever changed"</p>
<p><a href="http://www.k92radio.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.k92radio.com/</a></p>
<p>A beautiful song.</p>
<p>I'm sorry if this has been posted earlier. I didn't go through the whole thread.</p>
<p>THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED...AN ESSAY</p>
<p>Cho Seung-Hui. </p>
<p>I feel like you could be my blood brother. 23 years old, my age. I can understand only too perfectly your rage, your despair and your loneliness. I, too, have fantasized about killing my father with a hammer--for the same reasons, I think. And I think I understand what you mean about the "rich kids"--yes, they're disgusting, and no, it isn't only about money. It's a way of looking at the world, like when I see a girl hug her dad spontaneously, unreservedly, which always amazes me--why isn't she recoiling in horror and disgust? Or those people who say, quite smugly, that they stay away from "crazy people"--how do they know that one day, they won't be on the other side of that line? Someone told me that you showed signs of "coldness" at two years old. So you should have been killed? How easy it is to deny human rights to the "crazy", the "bad seed". The other. </p>
<p>The campus thought police. They tell you in writing classes to express your feelings, but if your feelings don't fall within certain boundaries, you're kicked out, quarantined to make sure what you have doesn't infect the "normal" students. And saying you're suicidal isn't a cry for help but a signal of danger, bringing not sympathy but the police. They say they don't want you to kill yourself, but make no mistake--it isn't because they care about you, but to avoid liability. Labeled disturbed, you are not considered fully human. And the proof is this: you kill 32 people, and there are mass outpourings of sympathetic grief for their deaths. President Bush comes down and says some hypocritical--no, let's not bring politics into this. Yes, Bush has authorized plenty of murder and torture, but a Democratic politician, any politician, would be coming to your campus and saying the exact same meaningless phrases. Your act is a major media event, everyone rushes to console the families of those killed; but if you had gone the quiet route and took no one's life but your own, would all these strangers still be there providing solace? Would anybody give a ****? </p>
<p>Yeah, that's what I thought. Apparently, some deaths are more valuable than others. </p>
<p>So I for one will not be joining in today's chorus of sanctioning mourning. The people you murdered have enough mourning for them already. I will not be gloating, "enjoy your stay in hell", as some have done, for what greater hell is there than the inner one that motivated you to do what you did in the first place? I will not be decrying the lack of mental health services that could have "helped" you--I have experienced forced hospitalization, as you have, it is cruel and brutal, and its purpose is not to "help" but to quarantine. I will not be mourning for your family, either--I know enough about what goes on in respectable families behind closed doors. </p>
<p>Today I will be mourning for you, Cho Seung-Hui--only for you. </p>
<p>IF YOU AGREE WITH THIS MESSAGE, PLEASE POST IT ONTO AS MANY MESSAGE BOARDS AND FORWARD IT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. I KNOW THAT I CAN'T BE THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THIS WAY.</p>
<p>That post above me is both scary and disturbing. It is also completely disrespectful to all those who were the victims of this tragedy. I really don't know what else to say.</p>
<p>I totally agree, Datkid. </p>
<p>MsN000, what, then, do you think should have been done? It seems from your essay that you sympathize with the shooter and feel, what, that you could have done the same thing? </p>
<p>We all feel sorry for people who go through tough times in their lives, who have problems, who are unable to reach out to others in appropriate ways, but at some point those people have got to be held responsible for themselves and their actions or they will need to be institutionalized to prevent them from harming themselves or others. What is your solution, MsN000?</p>
<p>"Some deaths are more valuable than others" - when a person does NOT choose to die, their life is RIPPED from them, they are MURDERED, you bet it is a valuable life.</p>
<p>Rest in Peace....</p>
<p>I couldn't have done a mass murder. I've fantasized about killing a few specific people who have hurt me, but even then I couldn't go through with it. But my circumstances are better than those of the VTech shooter. I have a life and a beautiful career ahead of me. I am not in a state of total isolation and hopelessness.</p>
<p>ABOVE ALL, THOUGH, PLEASE UNDERSTAND ONE THING: INSTITUTIONALIZING PEOPLE TO "PREVENT THEM FROM HARMING THEMSELVES OR OTHERS" IS NOT THE ANSWER. First of all, it's wrong. The legal system in this country, according to the Constitution, is supposed to hold people responsible for their ACTIONS--not their thoughts. The Fifth Amendment dictates that no person "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law", which the Sixth Amendment defines as a "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury". In the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment, adopted shortly after the Civil War, in fact made the Bill of Rights applicable to state and local governments. It should be obvious to anyone that forced psychiatric hospitalization is unconstitutional, since it deprives people of their liberty without trial. It is essentially pre-emptive imprisonment done on the basis of a therapist's recommendation, which is a lot less accurate than the psychic predictions used in "Minority Report", a movie where locking up people for crimes not committed was depicted as something scary! Second of all, being forced into a mental hospital or psych ward is, in itself, a traumatic event. I mentioned rather obliquely in my essay that Cho Seung-Hui had undergone this. He told his roommate at college that he was suicidal, which resulted in campus police entering his dorm room and escorting him to New River Valley Community Services Board, the Virginia mental health agency serving Blacksburg, Virginia. He was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" by New River Valley Community Services Board. The physician who examined him noted that he had a flat affect and depressed mood, even though he "denied suicidal thoughts and did not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder." Based on this mental health examination and because he was suspected of being "an imminent danger to [him]self or others," he was detained temporarily at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Christiansburg, Virginia. He was released the following day. I firmly believe that this psychiatric detainment was one of the things that motivated him to commit his murders. Those who would argue that a longer hospitalization could have prevented them fail to understand something fairly basic about mental hospitals, namely that: a) holding someone by force until they are judged "sane" by the doctors is not conducive to a healthy therapeutic relationship, without which no healing can take place, b) holding someone by force until they are judged "sane" by the doctors IS conducive to making them lie about their feelings until they get out, then plot revenge against those who imprisoned them, c) forced hospitalization often also means forced drugging, with the patient strapped to a table, pants pulled down, and injected in the buttocks with sedative drugs if he/she refuses to take them orally. This is obviously traumatic to anyone, but becomes even worse if the patient has previously suffered sexual abuse, something that Cho Seung-Hui definitely endured--the abuse was even centered around the same physical area, if the plays he wrote are any indication.</p>
<p>As for solutions: I don't know if there is one, at least in the short term. Short-term solutions are going to have to be centered around gun control, but I honestly don't know whether that should mean more access to guns or less. As for long-term solutions, killers are not born that way, nor do they learn to be violent from rock music or video games. They learn it at home, from the abuse inflicted on them by their nearest and dearest. So the best way to prevent violence is to prevent child abuse. Vermont and several other states have had pretty dramatic successes in that regard with their home visiting programs for new parents, which provide them with support, advice, and access to public services, and allow for early assessments of whether the home might be dangerous for the child.</p>
<p>I also think that changing the culture to make it more tolerant of difference, and removing the huge stigma associated with mental illness (which involuntary hospitalization contributes to greatly by reinforcing the idea that mentally ill people are violent and can't make their own decisions) would help a lot. But politicians can't really do much about that, other than refraining from making really inflammatory statements of the "kill all the Asians" variety, and making involuntary psychiatric commitment illegal like I said.</p>
<p>gun control is a huge one- and i have no clue how/why almost everyone can buy a gun if they wanted to...i jus't don't get it.</p>