Purdue University Shooting
 

Yesterday there was a murder at Purdue University in the electrical engineering building, just a couple hours from where I live (I go to Indiana University) and where a pretty large number of my best friends go to school.

In fact, to make it hit even closer to home, my very best friend and the other member of my band cloudcover is an engineering major at Purdue and spends most of his time in the exact building where someone was just murdered yesterday. He wasn't at the building during the shooting, but that's not really the point.

It's a terrible truth, but shootings like this happen quite often, but when they happen this close to home; this close to the ones you care about, it instills a fear in you unlike anything in the world. What makes it even scarier is that no one can establish a motive. I can only speculate, but if this was really just a random killing for no real reason...it's hard to want to go outside knowing that something like that just happens.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot of discussion possible here, but this is a current event and one that I'm very familiar with and that's part of what this board is about so I figured I'd let it all out here. ****'s not cool.

Rogert Ebert had a great say on the subject:
I agree with him to an extent, because this is a very newsworthy event in America. Maybe as a way to circumvent the "blaze of glory" attitude, names of the killers should not be released. I don't know how well that would mull over, though.

Bad that mate.

Might sound daft but at least if it's happened once in that building then the odds of it happening again must be mental.

I've posted it before but the gun problem in the US seems out of hand.

I heard about that this morning. Terrible.

I'm just waiting to see what details come out, the who and why, if any. I worked with an Eng Major fresh out of Purdue many years ago (still had that fresh college smell even), and I'm sure he frequented the same digs.

The thing that got me to thinking was that they actually stopped all classes today. It's amazing how the actions of one moron can effect the lives of so many. The trickle down from this will linger for quite a while.

It's been out of hand for many many years. I loathe and detest the US gun culture

yeah it's hard either way. do americans really need to know about every shooting? they're major events that unite us as a nation, so i think the answer to that is yes. but at the same time, plastering the face of every shooter on every website like the media has done for each of the past few major shootings might convince another troubled individual to do it themselves just like ebert suggested

If it takes a fatal shooting to unite a nation, I don't want unity.

pretty true. try and list all the recent times the U.S. has seemed to unite as a nation, and everyone will list Sandy Hook, Aurora, the Boston bombing, 9/11...only when people die.

Realistically do you think there is a solution to it or is it too ingrained now? Cos that's how it seems to me.

Shootings happen here (see something like Raoul Moat and Derrick Bird and it's mental and nationwide news for days and days) but when they do it's very much a rarity, even in the big cities. Over there it seems like it's happening all the time, can think of loads over the past three or four years.

In fact I posted an article last year, there was one mass shooting a day in 2013 in the US up to about September.

And that's just mass shootings. The majority of gun deaths in the US are not mass shootings.

the gun problem is a tough subject for me

on one hand, i do believe that stable individuals should be allowed to own one for defense and even use them for recreation at shooting ranges,

but i think it's too easy to obtain one. but the problem is that if we outlawed firearms, crazy people would still find a way to get a gun. it's not like it's difficult to go out and buy an ounce of marijuana despite it being illegal where i live, and getting a gun would be equally easy despite there obviously being a massive difference between getting some pot and getting a weapon. it's just something we can't really do anything about at this point.

...which makes this country a scary ****ing place

I'd like to see that article if you could find it.

This article states there has been one mass shooting every two weeks since 2006. A mass shooting is defined as at least 4 people getting killed.

USA TODAY Investigation: Database of mass shootings, 2006-2013

Also no one is really saying outlaw guns just have stricter laws in place.

Happens here, people can still get them but the penalties for possession are enough to put people off and there are a lot of hoops to jump through to acquire one legally. I was looking at getting a high powered air gun for hunting rabbits and even that was a ball ache.

There mate.

EDIT - That's the post, bollocks. I will return with the article asap.

EDIT x 2 - I didn't mean mass killing btw, mass shootings.

EDIT x 3 - You know what I can't even be arsed cos I'm watching a football match atm, I saw and read the article at the time, I know this cos people on the forum I took it off were questioning the number but I don't think I actually posted the article. If you still want it I'll try to get it.

^ this is exactly how I feel. I think that if someone feels that a firearm will protect them and their family they should be allowed to have one. But no one needs uzi's and armor piercing cyanide tipped ammo.

I went to Purdue for my undergrad and grad degrees (just moved from Lafayette about 6 months ago) and on top of that my sister still goes there. So it was pretty surreal for me. The way a lot of professors there handled it was pretty disturbing, to be honest. We had a text message alert system and many of them ignored it and continued teaching as if it wasn't a big deal. Purdue was also going to continue normal operations after the arrest had been made, but after students got pissed about the insensitivity of all that, they cancelled classes for today.

This just highlights to me how no one is safe anywhere. It's pretty sad.

Most of my friends still went to class just a couple hours after the shooting; lots of professors sent out emails saying class was still on and students were still expected to come. The Purdue Review (the student-run magazine) says there were even teachers laughing off the threat during lectures like you said. Seems like it was handled pretty horribly and the teachers need to be fired.

Yeah, I thought of you when I heard about this. I didn't realize you had a sibling who was still there. Crazy stuff.

I completely agree.

Yeah, I'm just glad that it wasn't a spree. It's incredibly sad, no doubt...I have this weird feeling of relief that my sister was ok and guilt for feeling that way since someone else's family member was killed.

I saw this article posted somewhere last September. It's probably worth posing in this thread, also...

Mass Shootings Fuel Fear, Account for Fraction of Murders - Bloomberg

Did not know about this but glad yourself and Schuyler are ok. Scary scary stuff. Totally agree with Ebert: the media make these things into something that almost glorifies the killers/bombers. Remember the Boston bombers? Of course you do. But do you remember more the people who died or the scumbags who carried out the atrocity?

Whose face was on magazine covers, newspapers and TV screens? Who got more "media attention" and who was talked about more on the internet?

Case proven, and closed.

But as I say, great that you two are ok. Condolences to the victim. Sad day.

Alright can we agree to not turn yet another mass shooting story into some twenty-seven page diatribe between pro-gun/anti-gun people? Cause once we're down that rabbit hole this thread is going to get completely jacked.

Don't worry it wasn't even a mass shooting.

the last post before yours was two days ago. Why even bother saying that?

You are so late and the thread didn't even go that far down that route.

What's with the hostility?

I'm not really hostile just asking out of curiosity because it just seems like something that didn't need to be said. The thread discussion was pretty much over and we didn't go that far into have the whole pro-gun/anti-gun discussion.

I just got this thread pointed out to me an hour ago. I honestly didn't know it even existed before let alone that it was dead.

Hmm, I think people have the right to know who does what crime. If you know the victims, I think you should be able to know the ones who committed the crime as well. I think, and some people might be a little irked by this, they're the more important subjects. They're the ones you can learn from. Not that the victims aren't important, or that they didn't have something important to say, but they're just normal people who dealt with their problems in a healthy, normal way.

I think the root of the problem is usually just mental illness. These kids are delusional, or they're fixating on certain ideas and losing touch with reality at some point. For example, one of the Columbine shooters compared the mission to his favorite video game, Doom, so I definitely think it played a part in his mindset. I don't think video games are at fault, though. You'd have to read some of the killers' journal entries, but they were both very dark creatures. Harris was very angry, and obviously wanted to make a statement to society, whereas Kleibold was just very depressed. I don't think you can really blame video games, Quentin Tarantino movies or the media for any of that, but people will continue to say that's what does it. If you watch too much TV, if you play too many video games, spend too much time on the internet, or listen to the wrong kind of music, you're not living in reality.

It's sort of a chicken-egg thing. I think it's much more logical that these guys were mentally ill before they started playing video, seeing as though there are no studies that can prove that any forms of entertainment can cause mental illness, and it's usually something that you develop as you grow up.