More Gun Violence!
It is simply outrageous that we have a web site with over 7500 members and only two apologists for easy access to automatic weapons by malcontents, were interested enough to even comment. Is it any wonder, although the majority of Americans want stricter gun control, politicians refuse to act? Where are the voices of angry ODs who feel this is unacceptable?
This is the newest obscenity as reported in the 2/15/08 edition of the New York Times...
Gunman Slays 5 at N. Illinois University
By SUSAN SAULNY and MONICA DAVEY
Published: February 15, 2008
DeKALB, Ill. — With minutes left in a class in ocean sciences at Northern Illinois University on Thursday afternoon, a tall skinny man dressed all in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun, the authorities and witnesses said.
The man shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times or more. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned and screaming, dropped to the floor. They crouched behind anything they could find, even an overhead projector. They scattered, the blood of victims spattering, some said, on those who escaped injury.
Five people, all of them students, were killed, John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, said at a news conference late Thursday evening. Sixteen others were wounded, two of them critically, Mr. Peters said. Hospital officials said several of the students had been shot in the head.
The gunman, whom the authorities did not identify, also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Mr. Peters said. The gunman, he said, had been a graduate student in sociology at the university in 2007, but was no longer enrolled here. Records suggested that the man, who had more recently attended a different state school, had no previous police contact, the authorities said.
Police officers from the campus, which sits in a snow-covered community 65 miles due west of Chicago, said three weapons had been found with the man’s body: two handguns, including a Glock, and the shotgun. The man’s body was found on the lecture hall stage, the police said. He had ammunition left over.
Kevin McEnery, 19, one of the public university’s more than 25,000 students, was seated in the third row of the class when the man stormed in and “just came out and started shooting.” Mr. McEnery dived for the floor, he said, and began crawling as far as he could from the gunman, trying to get near an exit. He found himself huddled beside a female student he did not know.
“I just thought if he gets up there, this is it — I’m about to die,” Mr. McEnery remembered thinking. “Because I knew if he shot long enough he would find us.”
When the gunman first burst in, Mr. McEnery said, the classroom turned loud and chaotic with some students shouting, “He has a gun!” and “Call 911!”
Then came an eerie silence, but for the bullets.
“Once he settled in and started shooting people, pretty much everyone was quiet,” he said.
In the moments after the shooting, university officials put into action a detailed security plan created for just such an incident, Mr. Peters said. Many universities and colleges around the country designed elaborate lock-down and notification plans in the days and weeks after a student at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in the worst shooting rampage in modern American history.
“This is a tragedy,” Mr. Peters said. “But from all indications we did everything we could when we found out.”
Shots rang out inside Cole Hall shortly after 3 p.m., Mr. Peters said. The campus police arrived within two minutes, the police said. At 3:07 p.m., the campus was ordered into a lockdown, Mr. Peters said. At 3:20 p.m., he said, the university posted an alert on its Web site, through its e-mail system and through another campus alarm system: “There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity.”
By 4 p.m., Mr. Peters said, the police had determined that there had been only one gunman, now dead, and issued another message to students at 4:14 p.m.: “Campus police report that the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat.”
The class in Cole Hall had been an introductory offering, and most of the 162 students registered for the course were probably freshmen or sophomores, said Jonathan Berg, chairman of the department of geology and environmental geosciences.
The authorities here canceled classes for the rest of the evening and Friday. Counselors had been called in, they said, and counseling was already being offered in every residence hall by Thursday evening, they said.
Leaders at the school said the events in Virginia a year ago had shaken many but also led to a focus on security and the possibility of such an incident.
Since Virginia Tech, people have had time to think about how to respond to these things, so it’s fresh on everybody’s mind,” said Mr. Berg. “And they’re trying to do everything they’ve been talking about for the last few months.”
Students here heard of threats at the school late last year, a fact that left some wondering whether there might be some connection to what had happened on Thursday.
Last December, university officials canceled classes for a day during final exams after someone scrawled threats in a dormitory bathroom, including a reference to the Virginia Tech massacre and a racial slur. The police here said Thursday they had no reason to suspect a connection.
Northern Illinois University, chartered in 1895, draws 91 percent of its students from inside the state of Illinois.
In Springfield, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich declared a state of emergency after the shootings, offering state relief for expenses and the state emergency management agency to help.
Outside the dormitories on Thursday evening, it looked like the last day of school. Students streamed out of dorms carrying backpacks and luggage. A caravan of parents made its way onto campus to meet them, and many waited for their children in idling cars.
Just off campus, along the school’s Greek Row, fraternity brothers were gathering at Pi Kappa Alpha to mourn. One of the dead, they said, was a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in finance and a fraternity brother.
“Right now everyone is very quiet, shocked, crying,” said Jason Garcia, 21 and the president of the fraternity. “Even us frat boys can get emotional, break down.” Inside, students were hugging, talking quietly. Two counselors offered help.
Outside her dormitory Thursday night, Michelle LeBlanc, 19, a sophomore, said she was supposed to be in Cole Hall when the shooting happened but had been late for class. A friend, though, had been inside, she said, and had sat beside a student who was shot in the head.
“She had to hold his head until help came,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “She’s so upset.”
Mr. McEnery, the student who had crawled as far as he could from the gunman on Thursday afternoon, said he had fled the building only after the bullets stopped pounding. The room was silent. He looked up, saw another student looking around, and raced out.
“I just can’t stop thinking about everyone,” Mr. McEnery said of the students who died. “It’s going to be tough going back.”
Your momas and daddies have always taught you it's someone elses fault. Personal responsibility is a subject that never came up as a child.
