THE man who sold Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui a high-powered pistol yesterday said he bore no responsibility for the tragedy.
Instead, gun dealer John Markell blamed the university for the slaughter, saying if guns had not been banned on the campus victims would have been able to defend themselves.
Mr Markell said all his staff could remember about Cho was that he was smartly dressed and had "an easy manner" when he bought a 9mm Glock semi-automatic five weeks ago for $682 after minimal checks under Virginia's loose gun control laws.
His words came as a simmering debate raged in the gun-loving United States, with passionate arguments from both sides.
The US media have branded the 23-year-old mass murderer as a mad loner - but American academics said the shooting required a broader review of US culture.
Johns Hopkins University Sociology Professor Joseph Gasper said there was a culture of violence in the US and many American movies and TV linked it to manhood.
He also said the ready availability of guns made it easier to commit crimes.
"I would urge people to avoid attributing the crime in Virginia to the mental illness of an individual and focus on the myriad social factors that would play a role in this sort of violent crime," Mr Gasper said.
He pointed to social marginalisation, violence in the media and masculinity as among the factors that needed to be examined.
About 40 per cent of American households own a gun. Some 200 million weapons are in private hands there and challenging the constitutional right to bear arms is potentially a hugely unpopular move.
President George W. Bush said while the shooting would inevitably rekindle debate about gun ownership, now was not the time to discuss it.
House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in Washington that lawmakers would discuss the extremely sensitive issue but there were no immediate plans for legislation.
Gun lobbyists claimed that the worst mass shooting murder in US history proved guns should be more readily available.
John Velleco of the powerful Gun Owners of America lobby group said a lack of guns among the university staff and students had allowed the massacre to happen.
"It's tragic to mandatorily disarm the citizenry and create these gun-free zones which are, in a sense, you know, giving these deranged madmen easy targets," he said.
Mr Markell took the same stance.
"Students are thrown out if they are found to carry guns on campus and professors are dismissed if they carry them," the 58-year-old gun dealer said.
"If you had responsible folk on that site carrying firearms, this would never have got so out of control.
"He would have been stopped in his tracks."
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Bunnyloaf2007-04-18 16:29 ID:kDrtvgCs
TLDR
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Anonymous2007-04-18 16:46 ID:XzPHr6qk
"If you had responsible folk on that site carrying firearms, this would never have got so out of control.
What if there had been irresponsible folk on site randomly shooting each other every day after day?
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Anonymous2007-04-18 18:52 ID:xz82SudX
FIRE ARMS
HEHEHEHE
FIRRRRRRRRRE
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Anonymous2007-04-18 18:58 ID:NYaqCUDJ
No, fire arms shouldnt be in the hands of students
however, schools should have security check point stations with an armed officer, incase anything of this magnitude happens again
what will this do?
well good thing you asked, it will give the school and students a sense of security and also if a problem occurs police response times will be quicker
one guard booth per section of school if divided into 5 zones, 3 on the first and ground floors and 2 on the 2nd floor if a school has.
itd be tragic if everyone had guns, imagine fights in school,
>>5 schools should have security check point stations with an armed officer
And you'll accept the tax hike to pay for this?
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Anonymous2007-04-18 19:27 ID:t76+NnJA
just keep ignoring the need for gun laws.
that way we just wait while you wipe yourselves out.
stupid amerikans...
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Anonymous2007-04-18 19:33 ID:dG4O2Xy2
Man wtf. Now they are going to make it legal so everyone on campus can carry guns? Oh gee. Since some kid shoot 32 people, how bout we make all the 20,000 students who go their be allowed to hold guns. Do you know how much bigger a whole they are digging themselves by doing this? I bet at any chance we get, we'll just pull a gun out and solve all our problems. yep, giving us more weapons and making them legal in school zones is the way to go~
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Bunnyloaf2007-04-18 19:35 ID:kDrtvgCs
This obviously means more dead kids.
Awesome!
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Anonymous2007-04-18 19:43 ID:t76+NnJA
>>9
i say let them loosen weapon control laws. allow the use of high explosives. ah fuck it. artillery too.
i give amerika 1 week to self-destruct after introducing that law...
good fucking riddance. just send you hollywood starlets my way first :)
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God2007-04-18 20:14 ID:0yTAVC8S
Gun control's for wimps and commies. The more people that own guns the more liable someone is to pull out their own gun and shoot someone on a killing spree. If every American owned a gun, the number of murders would decrease, because killing sprees would likely stop altogether. Not to mention that 9/11 most likely wouldn't have happened if all hundred and something people on the plane had had a gun. Someone would have popped a cap in the terrorists punk-asses.
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Anonymous2007-04-18 20:56 ID:t76+NnJA
>>11
no wonder the worlds fucked up. god's lost his mind...
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Anonymous2007-04-18 21:35 ID:XvvLlvwN
Damn asians.
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Anonymous2007-04-19 0:48 ID:qeV4cIjv
1000s of teenagers with guns, what could go wrong
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sumarugatu2007-04-19 2:26 ID:MzlXSzSj
God is right! you cannot control illegal drugs. so treat a gun as a drug projectile... thing.
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Anonymous2007-04-19 2:39 ID:zNbbKwiT
>>14
Of course they would have strict regulations and only allow certain model students/teachers to carry them.
point 1: "gun-free zones" are a fucking failure. that policy saved zero lives at vtech. 33 people are dead, and your precious campus policies did nothing to prevent it. it's time to accept the obvious.
point 2: nobody's advocating handing guns to students, or writing a blank cheque for concealed weapons for everyone. the fact is that there are many students around the country who have applied for and obtained concealed handgun licenses, and we carry everywhere but on campus. check the stats on crime committed by these licensed individuals, and tell me they're a threat to anyone but rapists and killers.
point 3: self-defense is a personal right. i may be a student, but i am also an adult and a citizen.
point 4: if you don't think an armed person would have stood a good chance at cutting this massacre short, you're an idiot. if a psychopath can kill 33 people with a pistol he bought a week prior, you'd better believe that i could manage to score one.
>>21 point 1: "gun-free zones" are a fucking failure. that policy saved zero lives at vtech. 33 people are dead, and your precious campus policies did nothing to prevent it. it's time to accept the obvious.
Gun-free zones are not about saving lives, it's about creating an atmosphere where you can relax without niggers running around with guns.
point 2: nobody's advocating handing guns to students, or writing a blank cheque for concealed weapons for everyone. the fact is that there are many students around the country who have applied for and obtained concealed handgun licenses, and we carry everywhere but on campus. check the stats on crime committed by these licensed individuals, and tell me they're a threat to anyone but rapists and killers.
The burden of proof is upon you, provide a reliable objective non-amerikan source and I will read it.
point 3: self-defense is a personal right. i may be a student, but i am also an adult and a citizen.
No, it is not a right.
point 4: if you don't think an armed person would have stood a good chance at cutting this massacre short, you're an idiot. if a psychopath can kill 33 people with a pistol he bought a week prior, you'd better believe that i could manage to score one.
I, for one, would run away instead of trying to become a hero. Any sane person would likely do the same.
One thing -- if everyone was indeed carrying guns -- intelligent people like Cho would instead have used indirect ways of killing, such as explosives, nerve gas, and so on. Guns don't protect against those types of crimes (nothing does, except stricter control -- and even then, it's always possible to build something deadly out of normal things).
Oh yeah. The problem is, it's way too easy to get guns. So how do we solve the problem? More guns. Guns everywhere. Every newborn babe should be given a handgun. More guns will really help this sorry situation North America is in.
Why doesn't this shit happen in Canaduh? Hmm, let's think about it for a moment.
*scratches head with gun*
You think guns give us more security. That's wrong. Guns put us in a world of paranoia and fear. Guns may not be the root of the problem in America, but they sure as fuck aren't helping anything.
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Anonymous2007-04-19 5:00 ID:wgRxF2pf
>>28
I hear ya!!
Check out this link:
stopgunmadness.on.nimp.org
great fukkin background check:
"please indicate below if you have had any mental problems"
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Anonymous2007-04-19 6:17 ID:wgRxF2pf
>>43
I'm here to inform everyone of a terrible loss.
Yesterday, around 4:00pm, I received a phone call telling me that moot has been in a fatal shooting accident.
I'm not feeling up to explaining detail of the accident, and how it happened, I'm just here to notify everyone since his family would be devastated, and his brother probably wouldn't want to explain the loss to a bunch of guys on the net.
Maybe if you wanted to show respect, and make him proud, leave a R.I.P moot or something in your sigs/msn/aim/whatever.
Just an idea.
>>50
Yes, it did. I forgot about the shooting in Montreal. I am a fool.
Okay, so the frequency of school shootings is much higher in the US. Yet, North American society as a whole is pretty much the same no matter where in North America you go. There aren't too many differences between the US and Canada, so why does it happen more in the US? I really think guns are the problem, and you don't solve a gun problem by throwing more guns at it.
If you ban guns then you ensure the only people who have them are criminals. Why should we hand hardened thugs this easy monopoly? I like in the UK and I would not go to a city center on my own if I wasn't armed. In the US there can't be any major trouble that hasn't been thought through because the people who start it run the risk of being dead by the end of it.
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Anonymous2007-04-19 16:51 ID:DnhjoCOS
All students should be SHOT.
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Anonymous2007-04-19 17:59 ID:qeV4cIjv
>>55
If you ban guns then it's fukiing easy to see who the criminals are, and dimestore retards and mental cases with no gang relation couldn't buy them at the grocery store
Also, cops and military would be allowed to have guns
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Bunnyloaf2007-04-19 18:03 ID:5u5K9zfk
I say we give guns to everyone. Who gives a flying fuck if someone gets shot? OMG SOMEONE DIED, ALERT THE INTERNETS!
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Anonymous2007-04-19 19:23 ID:242z7OYI
Korean is much crueler than Al-Qaeda.
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Anonymous2007-04-20 1:55 ID:67hWGHcN
i like mudkips
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sumarugatu2007-04-20 2:00 ID:7ftgssVD
how can you say that Korea is cruel? this is like the first incident on us soil by a Korean... WTF!
i agree that we should give guns to everyone... someone dying is like someone taking a shit. it happens all the time