Northern Illinois University shooting

[urednecku]

OK, Kennedy and Mr. McGrath both have excelent points. They both said a lot.

 

[Melensdad]

OK, Kennedy and Mr. McGrath both have excelent points. They both said a lot.

Kennedy does offer some insightful commentary but McGrath offers some portion of solution. Maybe it is just my years in management, but I'd rather have someone offer me a possible solution to a problem instead of a hand wringing recap of events, no matter how eloquently written.

 

[blondebullfrog]

Well said Skurka!

 

[rback33]

Well said Skurka!

Yes sir!

And rep points to boot.. like he needs them ....

 

[Melensdad]

Well we now have 'honest' students breaking the law to remain alive. It is a sad state of affairs that students feel compelled to arm themselves, but it is a sadder state of affairs when protecting oneself is a criminal offense and these students who choose protection face prosecution if caught.

From CNN:http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/20/cnnu.guns/index.html

Utah students hide guns, head to class

By Joshua Molina
Special to CNN

CNNU campus correspondent Joshua Molina is a senior at Brigham Young University. CNNU is a feature that provides student perspectives on news and trends from colleges across the United States. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of CNN, its affiliates or the schools where the campus correspondents are based.

University of Utah senior Nick shows how he keeps his gun concealed.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (CNN) -- The senior at the University of Utah gets dressed and then decides which gun is easiest to conceal under his clothes.
If he's wearing a T-shirt, he'll take a smaller, low-profile gun to class. If he's wearing a coat, he may carry a different weapon, he said.
He started carrying a gun to class after the massacre at Virginia Tech, but the student says he's not part of the problem of campus shootings and could instead be part of a solution.

Nick, who asked not to be fully identified so his fellow students wouldn't know he carried a gun, says he has had a concealed weapons permit for more than three years. But it was Seung-Hui Cho's murderous campus rampage that made him take a gun to class.

"Last year, after Virginia Tech, I thought 'I'm not going to be a victim,' " Nick said. "My first thought was 'how tragic.' But then I couldn't help but think it could've been different if they'd allowed the students the right to protect themselves."

Days after another campus shooting -- in which five students and the gunman died at Northern Illinois University -- students at colleges in Utah, the only state to allow weapons at all public universities, are attending classes.

See which states have laws about hidden weapons on campus »

Nick says his gun doesn't make him feel immune from attack. "But I feel that I will be able to protect myself, and I'm confident in my training and my ability," he said. His confidence is not shared by fellow student Griselda Espinoza, who recently transferred to the university. Some 28,000 students attend the school, as of the latest enrollment figures. "I feel less safe knowing that a stranger sitting beside me in class may have a gun in his or her backpack, The only people that should carry guns are trained officials." she said.

University of Utah spokeswoman Coralie Alder stressed that although the school has become a poster child in the media regarding guns on campus, the debate is really a statewide issue. "The university is following the law as determined by the Utah Legislature during last year's session, which allows concealed weapon permit holders to carry guns on university and colleges campuses, as well as other locations," she said.

Amanda Covington, Utah State Board of Regents spokeswoman, would not comment on the current gun laws on school campuses. However, she said the regents are opposing a legislative proposal to allow people with concealed weapons permits to have the weapons visible in public. "We are worried that it may affect their [students' and teachers'] willingness or desire to go to or teach a class on campus," she said.

The University of Utah, based in Salt Lake City, had prohibited firearms on its campus until that ban was struck down by the state's Supreme Court in late 2006. The institution, backed by all other universities in the state, is still fighting through federal courts to reinstate the ban.

But state legislators could be moving in the opposite direction, considering a bill to modify current law to allow people in Utah -- including students -- to carry loaded weapons openly.

Utah State Representative Curtis Oda said the bill, which he is sponsoring, is merely to clarify that people with weapons permits may carry a gun openly or -- with a concealed permit -- they may hide it for the sake of surprise. He stressed that people with permits have gone through rigorous checks. "When you see someone with a gun, you are looking at some of the most law-abiding people in the state," he said.

The issue goes beyond campus. Last year, a few miles from the University of Utah, a man walked into Trolley Square, a Salt Lake City shopping mall, and opened fire. Police were there in only three minutes, but the shooter had already killed five people and wounded four others. "And not just shootings, but [serial killer] Ted Bundy did some of his crimes at the University of Utah campus," said David Seelly, a recent University of Utah graduate who says he carried a concealed gun on campus. "If one of those ladies was a concealed-weapon holder, she could've stopped him before he did as much as he did."

To get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, people in Utah must, among other things:

• Be 21 years old
• Have no criminal record of violent, immoral or substance-related crime
• Be mentally competent.

Student Kevin Rechtenbach of the University of Utah said he was open to carrying a gun, but not certain that would solve problems. "If acts of terrorism continue on campus, then I will have no choice but to carry a concealed weapon," he said. "But you see, that is where the problem lies: Everybody will end up carrying concealed weapons, and everyday problems will be solved with guns rather than words or even fists."

The only places on campus that have restrictions are the dormitories. Students can request a roommate who doesn't carry a gun.

Private colleges in Utah, like the Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, do have more power to ban weapons on campus, but that, too, causes disagreement among students. "I own some guns, and I wish I was allowed to have them at school," said Collin Barker, a BYU student. "I would just keep [them] in my car for target shooting."

Casey Matheny, from Plano, Texas, now studying at BYU, appeared indifferent to the debate over students carrying guns. "I don't mind if they have one, I just don't want to know about it," he said. Rob Morrison, a BYU student from Ontario, Canada, doesn't think that having guns on campus would necessarily stop a potential killer. "The people that do it want to commit suicide anyway," Morrison said. "But it would give students a chance to defend themselves, and at Virginia Tech, it could have ended sooner than it did."

 

[RedRocker]

Good for them!!

 

[urednecku]

At least then the students will have a fighting chance, IF some-one excercises their RIGHT.

 

[Melensdad]

Here is some more news, it appears that the students are really starting to take gun seriously. Interesting that the statements alleged by the Brady Campaign are completely unsubstantiated and accepted as fact (despite evidence to the contrary).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/20/2167381.htm

Students with guns could stop massacres, says lobby group

By Anna Hipsley
Posted Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:11am AEDT
Updated Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:35am AEDT
A gunman killed five people at Northern Illinois University last week. (BBC World)

• Audio: Lobbyists call for uni students to take up arms (PM)

The murder of five people at an Illinois university last week was America's sixth shooting massacre in a fortnight.

But for some Americans, instead of strengthening the arguments for gun control, it has led to a new push to lift bans on guns on campus.

An internet-based lobby group wants staff and students to be able to arm themselves against mass killers - and membership is growing by the day.

On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people in what would come to be known as the Virginia Tech massacre.

The tragedy led US President George W Bush to sign off on the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years.

But it also led to the creation of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group which supports the right of gun licence holders to carry concealed handguns on college grounds.
Scott Lewis is the national media co-ordinator for the group. "What this is really about is evening the odds," he told PM. "What we're saying is, let these trained, licensed individuals, who are already carrying throughout their day-to-day lives without incident, let 'em carry on these college campuses and take that advantage away from those dangerous individuals."

The group now has almost 15,000 members across 50 states and has added 2,500 more since last week's shooting in Illinois.
​

"What we're talking about is allowing the same individuals who are already trained and licensed to carry to carry in grocery stores, shopping malls, office buildings, movie theatres, churches, banks, etc.

"What we're saying is let 'em carry on campus, because there's no reason to assume that they're gonna get drunk, disgruntled or distraught on campus and shoot somebody there," he said.
Mr Lewis says he does not think having more guns on campus will make it more likely for a shooting to occur. "In fact, there are currently 40 states in the US that are what we refer to as 'right to carry' states," he said.

"In those states, there has been no escalation in gun violence, gun accidents, so, I think it's unfair to assume that this is gonna lead to more violence."
Students for Concealed Carry on Campus claim they are an independent, grassroots organisation.

But Peter Hamm, communication director for the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence, is concerned that the group is the latest tool of the powerful gun lobby. "We know very clearly that they were organised and they are funded by the gun industry, by the companies that are selling the guns," he said. "This is not some spontaneous, grassroots organisation.

"There are more members than there were before Virginia Tech because the gun industry is spending more money to enlist more young people to help them spread the word, that if only we had more guns in America, we'd have less of a gun violence problem."

Mr Lewis's argument is that if students are allowed to carry guns, they could, in theory, stop a massacre happen, because they'd be able to take out the gunman. But Mr Hamm does not agree. "I'd say that we all want James Bond or John Wayne to step forward when a bad guy shows up, but the real world doesn't operate that way," he said.

"In the real world, when a second person draws a weapon in a crowded classroom full of people, it ends up with more people being shot, not fewer people being shot."

The only US state that currently lets students carry guns on campus is Utah. But a university in Colorado and another in Virginia recently decided to follow suit. Legislation is also pending in several other states to overturn the ban on concealed weapons on campus.

 

[Melensdad]

Looks like the murders at NIU have spawned a backlash. Here is another sign of it, this time in Arizona.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0226guns0226.html

Guns-on-campus bill advances in Senate
Scott Wong
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 26, 2008 12:00 AM

Legislation that would allow people to carry guns on Arizona community-college or public-university campuses advanced Monday, 11 days after a gunman killed five people and himself in an Illinois university lecture hall.

Members of the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee passed the legislation along a party-line 4-3 vote. Democratic senators Ken Cheuvront, Albert Hale and Richard Miranda voted no.

Senate Bill 1214, which would allow concealed-weapons permit holders to carry a gun at community colleges and Arizona's three public universities, next heads to the Senate Rules Committee.

Gun owners must be 21 or older to obtain a permit.

Sen. Karen Johnson, the bill's lead sponsor, originally introduced legislation that would allow guns at all schools, including elementary, middle and high schools. But facing pressure from some Republican colleagues, the senator was forced to narrow the bill's scope to apply only to higher-education institutions.

"It's not the bill that I wanted because I still feel our little kindergartners are sitting there as sitting ducks," said Johnson, a Mesa Republican and Judiciary Committee member. But she added that the revised bill has a better chance of moving forward.

Cheuvront, a Phoenix Democrat and the only other committee member to explain his vote, said he didn't view schools "as a good place to have firearms whether that someone is deranged or happens to be a student or member of the faculty."

The committee last week heard more than two hours of intense testimony from both supporters and opponents of the measure.

Police chiefs from Arizona's three public universities - Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University - said allowing guns on campuses could create greater confusion and lead to the loss of additional innocent lives when police respond to a school shooting. Officers could shoot the wrong person, they said.

On the other side of the issue were gun-rights advocates, who said the proposal would give students, teachers and administrators a way to protect themselves during a mass shooting. By the time police arrive on scene, supporters said, the bloodshed is usually over.

On Valentine's Day, Stephen Kazmierczak, 27, walked into a Northern Illinois University class and opened fire using a shotgun and two handguns.

By the time campus authorities reached the scene, the University of Illinois graduate student had killed five people, wounded 16 others and fatally shot himself.

Following Monday's vote, lobbyist Kendra Leiby of the Arizona Coalition of Domestic Violence said her group was disappointed by the Senate panel's decision, arguing that legalizing guns on campuses invites perpetrators to commit crimes.

John Wentling, vice president of the gun-rights group Arizona Citizens Defense League, also expressed disappointment, but for a different reason.

"By limiting the bill to colleges and universities, it says that school-age children aren't as valuable as college students," he said.​

 

[DaveNay]

Stupid update from today...

Our wonderful (idiot) governor of Illinois is pushing for a $40 million state funding bill to pay for tearing down the perfectly usable lecture hall where this shooting occurred, and build a new replacement building.



I can accept perhaps a couple mil for a remodel and re-dedication job, but this is typical throwing away tax payers money.

 

[RedRocker]

Stupid update from today...

Our wonderful (idiot) governor of Illinois is pushing for a $40 million state funding bill to pay for tearing down the perfectly usable lecture hall where this shooting occurred, and build a new replacement building.



I can accept perhaps a couple mil for a remodel and re-dedication job, but this is typical throwing away tax payers money.

Come on Dave, it gives the illusion of doing something without the hassle of addressing the real solution.

 

[DaveNay]

Come on Dave, it gives the illusion of doing something without the hassle of addressing the real solution.

Yeah, it's about as effective as sitting in my boxers eating a pizza and drinking beer.

 

[American Woman]

So stupid.....
Putting a new building up will not erase memories. From day one it will be known as the building replacing that building where the shootings occurred

 

[Melensdad]

Stupid update from today...

Our wonderful (idiot) governor of Illinois is pushing for a $40 million state funding bill to pay for tearing down the perfectly usable lecture hall where this shooting occurred, and build a new replacement building.

Well Dave you whole state is full of folks who are impotent when it comes to actually dealing with the core issues.

Take a look at the NIU administration because it seems to me that some of the wording used to describe things on the various web pages regarding the shootings at NIU are simply written to be politically correct. What worries me is that sometimes when we are too politically correct we sanitize messages so that they have less meaning. So when we are trying to comfort people sometimes we need to address issues. Other times things are written in such a way as to ridicule others.

Here are some of the NIU webpages (but they have already removed several that were up just last week)
http://www.niu.edu/memorial
http://www.niu.edu/president/messages/niu_community.shtml
http://www.niu.edu/memorial/notices.shtml
http://www.niu.edu/stuaff/messages/students.shtml

When NIU writes about protestors from the Westboro Baptist Church (you know the nutcases who cheer at military funerals) it takes puts the word "religious" in quotation marks and that sets it apart and in context opens it up for implied ridicule. Similarly it never address the fact that students were confronted by a murderer (or some other term to describe the person) but were confronted by a gunman (which transfers the action from the person to the object).

Some of the other wording seemed to be chosen specifically to evade reality as they write about the 'fallen' students and to 'commemorate the events' while trying to 'pay tribute to the injured.'

But nowhere in the notice about Memorial Services did it say they would pray for the students. It all just seemed too politically correct to me and that seems to downplay the real events, the horrible events, the tragic event that occurred. If the events are not confronted then when will the real healing start?

Maybe I'm just wrong but I don't think you get past things by sugar coating, or hiding them, behind flowery talk . . . or knocking down a building and putting a new one up in the very same spot!

 

[Bobcat]

Stupid update from today...

Our wonderful (idiot) governor of Illinois is pushing for a $40 million state funding bill to pay for tearing down the perfectly usable lecture hall where this shooting occurred, and build a new replacement building.


<snip>

Good, then it'll be like it never happened.

 

[Melensdad]

Good, then it'll be like it never happened.

A girl I know who is a very recent alumnus from NIU and who still lives near campus says that the governor had plans to to demolish the building and replace it prior to the NIU shooting, apparently he was thwarted by the logic of the budget process. Now it seems more likely that he will actually get his building. Probably name it after himself too?

Oh, and speaking to total idiocy, here is an LA Times editorial:

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-me martinez25feb25,1,515373.column?ctrack=2&cset=true

February 25, 2008


I am having a recurring nightmare.

It takes place in a lecture hall at Anywhere State College during a tedious presentation on the history of video games. The only alert person in the class, a straight-A student majoring in Wi-Fi, suddenly notices an unfamiliar male entering the room.

He is wearing a hooded sweat shirt because it is cold outside and the wind is blowing, but it makes him look like a convenience store crook. He is also carrying a backpack and begins to reach into it.

I know, because I am an observer in the nightmare, that the stranger is only going for his NRA Play Station "Blood in Space" to occupy his mind during the lecture by a professor whose topic that day is "Pacman, the Godfather." The subject is, like, yesterday, and hardly anyone is listening or even paying attention to the presence in the doorway.

But the alert Wi-Fi major in the sixth row, whom everyone knows by the nickname "Guns," is sure that the doorway figure fits the profile of a campus killer and isn't about to sit there and be murdered without a fight. Guns instantly draws his legal 9-millimeter Beretta and begins blasting away.

The gunfire arouses the instincts of others in the class, and they, similarly, draw their permit-allowed weapons ranging from handguns to shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and join the fun. One student throws a flash/stun grenade.

There is chaos as the lecture hall turns into a battleground of crossfire, smoke and explosions, and when the battle stops, the only one standing is the lecturer, who is behind a bulletproof lectern. After a moment he continues his talk about the trail-blazing animated hungry ball that captured the attention of the world by eating electronic blips.

I fell into the nightmare after reading that 12 states are considering bills that would allow people with concealed-weapons permits to carry handguns on the campuses of public universities. The revelation came after the deadly shooting at Northern Illinois University. The prospect has stirred online support and is causing gun merchants to drool over the prospects of increased sales.

I was so terrified at the notion of giving guns to kids who can't figure out where their next class is that on a night when the rain was falling and the wind blowing, I had another nightmare.

This time I am taking my grandson to his kindergarten class at the behest of his mother, who has a doctor's appointment. As I am watching him run off happily into the play yard on School Street, I notice that another little boy has dropped his Roy Rogers lunch box.

It is red and yellow and has a picture of Rogers on the front mounted on Trigger, who is rearing. Rogers is waving his cowboy hat in the air the way he used to in all of those exciting 1950s westerns. I am intrigued by the lunch box because most kids today don't even know who Roy Rogers is, or was, much less Trigger, who is stuffed and mounted in a museum in Branson, Mo.

Then something equally significant catches my eye. In addition to the apple, carrot sticks and tofu sandwich that fall from the boy's lunch box, there is a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver of the type I once carried as a backup weapon while a Marine fighting in the Korean War.

"What in God's name?" I shout, surprised that the snub-snouts, as we called them, are still around. I help the kid put it back in his lunch box, along with the apple and the other stuff, and ask where he'd gotten it. His grandfather, he says, who had also been in Korea. Then the boy's mommy comes by from parking her car and hustles him into the play yard, admonishing him for talking to a stranger -- bad boy.

The gun in the lunch box? That doesn't surprise me because it is within the guidelines of a new state law that mandates the right of students from grades K-12 to carry firearms to school to protect themselves against kids with guns. (This is a nightmare, after all.) It is basically the same right that had been granted earlier to college students.

Well, sure, even in the nightmare I am a little nervous that children would grow up knowing more about Smith & Wesson than Abraham Lincoln, but at least they get training in firearms safety and sharp-shooting, learning how to pick off the dangerous classmates without hurting others. I guess John Wilkes Booth had that kind of training too.

But then I begin worrying that the grandpa who furnished the snub-nose might come up with an antiquated .30-caliber air-cooled, belt-fed machine gun to mount in the kindergarten yard for all the kids to share. How could they possibly rely on the lethal efficiency of a weapon that was more than a half-century old?

I awoke from the nightmare both pondering the possibilities and writhing from the very notion of kids with guns. But then I finally calmed down, comforted by the fact that it was only a bad dream and not a reality.

At least not yet.

 

[Melensdad]

Just another update . . . I'm sure DaveNay's property tax and state income taxes will be put to good use.

I just saw a report on the news that the Cole Building is going to be demolished and NIU has asked Illinois for $40,000,000.00 in 'emergency' funds to build a new building. The new building will be built on a different site. The Cole Building site will have a 'memorial' built on that site after the current building is demolished. It was proposed that the cost of the memorial may be funded by donations (of course there is no reason to believe that the memorial will ACTUALLY be paid for with donations).

 

[Kwiens]

Oh boy, way to waste money Illinois!!!!

My nephew attends NIU and has class in the same room at the same time but on MWF. His dorm is right behind Cole Hall. He wasn't shaken up or traumatized but his mom (my wife's sister) sure was. The first question my wife and I asked when we heard about the shooting at his school was "did he do it?". Thank the Lord God Almighty it wasn't him.........

Kevin