Gunman Kills 21 on Virginia Tech campus

[bigred389]

Okay. It's the gross oversimplification I've been taught over and over again in every SD or MA course I've ever taken. I'd love to hear the non-gross non-oversimplified version of it from someone well versed in this type o' thing.

Guy's holding a gun, not aiming it.
He's approximately fifteen feet away. You can turn a corner and run, or you can charge at him.
Not everybody can rapidly bring a gun up and sight in to take out a moving target at a distance from the rest position.
A trained monkey could shoot you running in on it from eight, five feet away.

Still want to to go "through" the threat?

Look, I've learned the same thing in the combatives classes I've taken, but they ALL were talking about CLOSE combat. I'd much rather be flexible than train mantras.

[Britt]

Britt,
I doubt there was anything organic wrong with Cho, since he had the foresight to plan the event and forward as much material as he did to the news for coverage. This guy was simply a psychotic narcissist or the worst kind.

Could be. Klebold and Harris certainly were; there wasn't a damn thing wrong with them biologically that could explain what they did. They were just plain evil, Harris especially.

I guess what makes me wonder is that Cho just seems crazier somehow. I have to admit you're right that he shows all the classic signs of the "organized" killer in his actions, but his thought and speech process seems so disorganized, way more so than Harris and Klebold. Bear in mind I'm not trying to excuse what Cho did in any way, I'm just doing some armchair psychoanalyzing out loud. I know it sounds macabre, but I kind of hope there's something left of his brain to examine post-mortem.

[Tom Yum]

If you're a foreigner in the United States, France or even Japan (less so) and cannot speak the language well, you can get mocked.

If you're a foreigner in many other countries and can hold a simple conversation in their native language, they are stoked that you can understand them and get your own point across.

Phew...language is a strange and subtle thing.

This guy Cho could have accepted that his English sucked and developed a sense of humor or wit over it, while working on improving it. Its called coping.

Classmate: Hey Cho, go back to China!

Cho: I did and your mom enjoyed it. The next time we go back she wants you to come along too...

[treelizard]

Again...I feel that is a GROSS oversimplification.

Okay. It's the gross oversimplification I've been taught over and over again in every SD or MA course I've ever taken. I'd love to hear the non-gross non-oversimplified version of it from someone well versed in this type o' thing.

[treelizard]

Somewhat related question:
If you know someone who goes through depressive episodes, how should you approach/help them?

As an aspiring teacher I can only talk about this in how it relates to the classroom. There was an attempted suicide at the school I was volunteering at, and the teacher who dealt with it said she definitely saw warning signs in the student's writing. I saw a piece of suicidal writing at another school I was at and the teacher did not respond to it. She said it was "good poetry." So I jotted down his name and I called his counselor and social worker and spoke with the assistant principal, even though I knew the teacher I was working with would probably hate me for it.

If a kid is suicidal, let the principal know immediately. I mean right now as soon as you know hand deliver the message to the secretary immediately. Then call the parents yourself as a back up unless it's against school rules. Then immediately call the social worker and guidance counselor. Do not wait until your free period. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Kids have been known to kill themselves in school. And same thing with kids drawing guns or turning in papers with anything about school violence. Also contact the school security team immediately.

Every teacher I know that has failed to do this has regretted it. If that's not enough motivation, teachers are legally obligated to report this information to the administration and the school counselor and/or case worker. If a student is being abused you have a legal obligation to immediately call CPS. As in DROP EVERYTHING NOW AND DO IT. And I would tell students ahead of time that I will report any illegal activities in their journals. No surprises if and when I do.

[Tom Yum]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

BLACKSBURG, Va. - In high school, Cho Seung-Hui almost never opened his mouth. When he finally did, his classmates laughed, pointed at him and said: "Go back to China."

As such details of the Virginia Tech shooter's life come out, and experts pore over his sick and twisted writings and his videotaped rant, it is becoming increasingly clear that Cho was almost a textbook case of a school shooter: a painfully awkward, picked-on young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world he believed was out to get him.

"In virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass killers that I've studied in the past 25 years," said Northeastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox, co-author of 16 books on crime. "That doesn't mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage."

When criminologists and psychologists look at mass murders, Cho fits the themes they see repeatedly: a friendless figure, someone who has been bullied, someone who blames others and is bent on revenge, a careful planner, a male. And someone who sent up warning signs with his strange behavior long in advance.

Among other things, the 23-year-old South Korean immigrant was sent to a psychiatric hospital and pronounced an imminent danger to himself. He was accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with his cell phone. And his violence-filled writings were so disturbing he was removed from one class, and professors begged him to get counseling. He rarely looked anyone in the eye and did not even talk to his own roommates.

Cho, who killed 32 people and committed suicide at the Blacksburg campus Monday, cast himself in his video diatribe as a persecuted figure like Jesus Christ. Cho, who came to the U.S. at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents worked at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington, also ranted against rich "brats" with Mercedes, gold necklaces, cognac and trust funds.

Classmates in Virginia, where Cho grew up, said he was teased and picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking.

Once, in English class at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., when the teacher had the students read aloud, Cho looked down when it was his turn, said Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior and high school classmate. After the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.

Stephanie Roberts, 22, a classmate of Cho's at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school. But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with him told her they recalled him getting bullied there.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn't.

In other developments Thursday:

• Gov. Timothy Kaine appointed an independent panel to look into the tragedy and how authorities handled it. The panel will be led by former Virginia State Police superintendent Gerald Massengill and will include former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

• University officials said that all of Cho's student victims would be awarded degrees posthumously, and officials are outlining a way to let students complete their courses, possibly by allowing their work to this point in the semester count as completed.

• With a backlash developing against the media, and some warning of copycat killers, the major TV networks cut back on showings of Cho's video rant. "It has value as breaking news," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, "but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam."

A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."

The report said that "in some of these cases the experience of being bullied seemed to have a significant impact on the attacker and appeared to have been a factor in his decision to mount an attack at the school. In one case, most of the attacker's schoolmates described the attacker as the kid everyone teased."

Cho "would almost be a poster child for the pattern that we saw," said Marisa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service and co-author of the study, conducted jointly with the Education Department.

Among the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were two other Westfield High graduates, Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. But police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.

However, another expert who has worked with mentally disturbed young criminals suggested that Cho's actions probably had genetic causes.

"This is very different" from someone who was bullied to the breaking point — Cho was clearly psychotic and delusional, said Dr. Louis Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

"This type of mental illness that this poor man had was not something that was likely precipitated by teasing or bullying," he said. More likely, he said, is that Cho had a biological psychiatric disorder that may have worsened in recent years because of the pressures of college life and his leaving the support of his family.

Randazzo said about the only difference between Cho and the killers studied is he hadn't bragged about the assault in advance, though that may surface later, perhaps in blogs or chat rooms.

Fox, the criminologist, said Cho probably made the decision to go on a killing spree months ago based on his weapon purchase. That would explain why witnesses described him as remarkably calm when he did the shooting.

"There's a lot of scripting that's going on in their heads, a lot of planning. Once they've decided it, there's a certain degree of comfort and satisfaction that they'll be the last to laugh," Fox said.

Fox said there is typically a precipitating event that sets a gunman off. It is not yet known what that was in Cho's case.

"It may not be huge" to normal people, but to Cho "it was the final straw that broke the camel's back," Fox said.

[bigred389]

Okay, so maybe someone better versed in tactics can comment on this, but what I've always been told is that the best way to deal with a threat is to move THROUGH the threat.

Again...I feel that is a GROSS oversimplification.

[treelizard]

It makes sense, though. Most men I know who get clocked a couple times it doesn't really affect them, whereas most women who get punched in the face have a harder time with it. I've had a bit of training and it still takes me a minute after I get punched hard to regroup. Conversely, there are a lot of women who have back pain for YEARS before seeing a doctor (I was amazed at how bad some of my chronic injuries were when I finally caved in and got help for them) whereas most men can't handled prolonged pain as well as women. The more I research it the more it seems that men were really designed to be protectors and women were really designed to bear children (which isn't chronic pain, but it is certainly prolonged pain). People can be pissed off about it if they want to be, though.

[Tom Yum]

Somewhat related question:

If you know someone who goes through depressive episodes, how should you approach/help them?

My observation and or experience has been to listen more than talk, don't demand or expect too much of them because it can set them off easily...but sometimes, I think if you give them a little push towards the right things i.e. music or excercise, its helpful.

[Tom Yum]

Not to get off topic...

From the article:

Research in this area is yielding fascinating results. For example, male experimental animals injected with estrogen, a female sex hormone, appear to have a lower tolerance for pain-that is, the addition of estrogen appears to lower the pain threshold. Similarly, the presence of testosterone, a male hormone, appears to elevate tolerance for pain in female mice: the animals are simply able to withstand pain better. Female mice deprived of estrogen during experiments react to stress similarly to male animals. Estrogen, therefore, may act as a sort of pain switch, turning on the ability to recognize pain.

I'm going to add that giving birth ain't no joke either!

[treelizard]

And one more for SamuraiGuy:

http://www.medicinenet.com/chronic_pain/page5.htm

This is just one study but other studies are showing that men experience pain differently than women. Men can handle acute pain better, and women can handle chronic pain better. Gee, how about that? Also I think testosterone might make just a wee bit of a difference in who is more capable of handling a situation more effectively... Though I suppose you could argue that women pumped up with steroids would be as effective, I'm not sure there were any in these particular VA Tech classrooms.

First of all why the **** are the women the gender that gets to hide under the desk? They should be just as responsible for themselves and the safety of others as men are.

Well, shit, why the **** are men the gender that gets to not carry babies for nine months and then give birth? They should be just as responsible for that as women are.

See how absurd and stupid that sounds?

[Tom Yum]

Internal versus external locus of control... they all blamed all of their problems and circumstances on everyone and everything but themselves.

Awesome.

Learning from one's successes and especially failures is a valuable and humbling lesson that I continue to use.

[treelizard]

Well, looks like we disagree on a tactical point...

See, I think the loss of life would've been heavier had they moved TOWARDS the threat.

Okay, so maybe someone better versed in tactics can comment on this, but what I've always been told is that the best way to deal with a threat is to move THROUGH the threat.

[treelizard]

Cho makes a mention to Kleibold and Harris, the two gunman in the Columbine shootings. Were there any other parallels?

Kleibold and Harris targeted jocks and women.

Cho targeted the rich and women.

The only parallel I can see here is that these psychopaths targeted the things they could not get.

Internal versus external locus of control... they all blamed all of their problems and circumstances on everyone and everything but themselves.

Also they had all taken anti-depressants before the attacks. I've read articles implicating anti-depressants in suicide but it's hard to tell what's correlative and what's causal.

Kleibold and Harris also targetted Christians specifically. Not sure about Cho.

[Tom Yum]

Aside from Liviu Librescu, there was also a student named Zach Petkewicz who was cowering behind a podium who decided to take action. He got a bunch of fellow students to move a table against the door and HELD it there while there while gunshots were going off, and even after the door opened they all pushed the table against the door again...basically saving the entire classroom.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/vtech.closecall/

Good one, Tree.