Disclaimer: Somewhere on this blog are multiple grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and obscure Star Wars references.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Virginia Tech Massacre Part 1. The Event

Normally if I had to read the news I just jump to some online editions of popular broadcasts like BBC, Al-Jazeera, Gulf News or 7Days. This time however when I opened up Firefox, Yahoo's frontpage said all that I needed to hear. "Massacre at VT"

VT? Virginia Tech? Really? WTF?! AMMAR & SEAN STUDY THERE! Quick as a flash I opened up multiple tabs and started browsing for any news that I could find on the event. BBC, CNN, Google News, Yahoo News and any any any any website that had anything on it. Needed to know if these guys were ok. Within a few minutes I had some details. There were TWO shootings, a couple of hours apart. Somewhere around 30 people killed, later this was confirmed at 33 including the shooter himself. More sketchy details here and there, but within a few hours I managed to get most of the details. Eventually I managed to contact Ammar on Messenger and he was fine, and so was Sean. I was relieved. Then I continued on some research on the incident.

Cho Seung-Hui was a 23-year old South Korean at VT. Read more about him here. That day he took out 32 students and then shot and killed himself, with a Glock that he was able to purchase because he was a legal resident of the United States of America. The irony for this; the KKK actually promote more students to own handguns, 'so that they could defend themselves.' Read more on that here and here. That is pretty sick. A post on Gun Laws in the USA soon.

Jamal Albarghouti, a grad student at VT, was on his way to meet an adviser, just before the second shooting. He hadn't heard about the first one yet. On his way there he heard what he thought were gunshots. He didn't panic due to the recent bomb scares at VT, and kept on his way. Later when he saw the police draw their weapons as well, he knew that this was going to be serious and began taking a video. See the video and his interview here.

More on the VT Killings and discussion later. Just the facts for now.

May God bless the dead, and keep safe the living. Inshallah.

xx

M

3 comments:

Lhjunkie said...

It's a conspiracy.
With elections about a year away, Dubya needed to up his ratings by gaining the confidence and sympathy of the public.

Lhjunkie said...

Edit: I know he can't be re-elected, but he just wants to end his second term on a good note.

Devon said...

On the topic of gun control laws: the last time gun control laws were actually strengthened in the states was under Clinton, and it pretty much destroyed his approval ratings. Bush has been quietly and systematically dissembling every piece of progress Clinton made, including a refusal to renew the ban on assault rifles. What good is an assault rifle to the average citizen, unless they're trying to kill huge numbers of people indiscriminately? Not to mention that, if I recall correctly, the 5 day waiting time (meant to prevent crimes of passion) on the purchase of a handgun has either already been waived by the Bush admin, or soon will be. Not that it matters, since if you purchase a gun at a gun show there, there's no background checks or waiting time.

No wonder this sort of crap happens in the US. No wonder that, if you include accidents and suicides, the number of gun-related deaths in the states is averaging at 80 a day, right now. And the most powerful firearms lobby group in the states right now is the NRA, which happens to a) be totally mainstream, and b) wants every US citizen to be in possession of a gun. You'd think that after the massive gun crime > massive crackdown on firearms posession > massive reduction in gun-related crimes pattern followed in the UK, Australia, and (to some extent) Canada, the US would have caught on by now.

Sorry for the rant. But it just seems the height of stupidity to hear people in the states advocating to allow guns in high schools in order to, somehow, prevent this sort of mass murder. *headdesk*