Possibly, at the very least his immigration status was not a prohibitor, the firearms were illegaly modified (sn# obliterated) AND illegaly stored on campus, AND illegaly carried on campus (I point this out only to demonstrate that he was NOT a law abiding citizen before he went on a rampage)

Drtuddle on April 17, 2007 at 3:17 PM

You forgot to mention the he is a MURDERER too.

I’ve always heard this is why many professional hitmen in organized crime prefer to do their handiwork with a .22. That and the reduced blood spatter involved.
As I recall, the .22 with the barrel removed (I don’t recall the reason for that detail, just the detail itself–might have had to do with the desire to maximize the energy involved, considering there was no need for any kind of accuracy over distance) held directly to the skull was a favorite of the Bolsheviks, as well. I believe it was used to dispatch a number of the Romanovs.

Blacklake on April 17, 2007 at 12:46 AM

Black, 22 rifles are commonly used by ranchers precisely because of the small caliber bullets tendency to pass through one layer of bone but not make it out the other side. Ranchers who need to put down cattle would take a shot at the skull knowing it would scramble the brains but not make a horrible mess. I imagine mobtypes had similar logic. As far as a carry weapon, most people would argue that its not powerful enough to stop an angry attacker or someone high on drugs. On the other hand, it has little recoil compared to a 45 or 9mm handgun and even little bullets that hit their target obviously are more effective than big bullets that miss.

Yesterday was a tragedy. My sympathies go out to Virginia Tech and anyone involved in such a terrible and sad event. I cannot fathom what kind of a coward it takes to do something so absolutely senseless and horrific. We should all grieve for the famil…

Blacklake – well, that fits in nicely with this thread, but someone told you wrong.

No barrel on a firearm minimizes, not maximizes energy.

The bullet is accelerating until just after it leaves the barrel.

In that case, maybe they removed the barrels to diminish the energy. As I said, I only recall the peculiar detail that the barrels of the pistols were removed, not the why of it.

Also, I’m not certain the weapons in question were .22’s, only that they were rather small caliber.

I wonder what Rosie and the gang at “The View” will be discussing this AM.

Meanwhile, the American federal government refuses to screen entrants into the U.S. effectively and neglects to take a hand in controlling anti-American propaganda. I’ve said before that the American governments (federal, state, and local) neglect core responsibilities of Justice, State, and War in favor of playing sugar daddy and nurse maid. It seems the hundreds of billions of dollars the Americans spend on Social Security and Medicare would be much better spent safeguarding the future of one’s own family and the future of the country.

Hot Air article link Report: At least 20 29 32 dead, 28 wounded in shooting at Virginia Tech; Update: Chinese man on student visa? Update: Two suspects?posted at 12:28 pm on April 16, 2007 by Allahpundit Good lord. I’ve been peeking at this story for …

I wonder if the guy was influenced by the perpetual nonstop anti-American propaganda in the South Korean media and public education system. I lived in Korea and know it firsthand. Look at the following webpage by an American documenting this propaganda and notice how they use children for the anti-Americanism. Korean students get twelve years of anti-Americanism. Here is a webpage documenting it:

http://www.usinkorea.org/

Also, look at this hit movie in Korea (even playing in the Washington area) with the American as the villain: http://www.hostmovie.com/

If this guy turns out to be Korean, I would start demanding the South Korean government to put an end to its sanctioned anti-Americanism.

Nauseating.

But true.

\”I\’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly\’s actions,\” Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, \”because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus…\”…

It’s been said today that these types of madness-driven mass murders have occurred throughout history, that this is nothing new. Perhaps that’s true, this kind of horror has shown a regular pattern in every civilization since man first created fighting implements that improved our skill in killing. But I would submit two points that make my initial blog entry above more poignant:

1. America is the epitome of civilization. We have made progress on every aspect of the human existence in this project we call America. We have broken many patterns of horror and hardship that plagued mankind until the dawn of America: disease, poverty, war. So why is it that we have not only retained this particular horror but increased it’s frequency?
2. America did not see mass murder perpetrated by a single person or a small group (less than 5) on this scale before the late 20th century. Why? It wasn’t means. The handgun was invented in the late 19th century, the fully automatic rifle just a few decades or so later. We certainly had the means. Clearly, this incident ratchets up the scale of such acts not only in the body count but also in how close it is to the last occurence of such a massacre. Let me put it this way: if public shootings were birth contractions, we would be very very close to a birth. Going mad enough to kill is not new, but not losing your will to murder after the first or second or fifth victim is. War-hardened soldiers should be immune to carnage, not students.

It is plain that a man seeks to destroy his enemy when he feels threatened. This man set out to destroy a whole building full of people. Nothing was particular about the victims to him except that they needed to die. I can’t help but think this guy was angry at the whole campus, and between 7 and 9am today the people in that academic building represented the collective campus in some sort of payback attempt. Think about it, he used two handguns: 9mm, and a .22. This seems very last-minute and very deliberate. Last minute because the two don’t match. You’d think if he had two guns they would be of the same kind or caliber. Deliberate because he had thought enough about the massive carnage he intended to inflict to see that he needed more than just a single handgun. Based on all this, the following is clear to me:

* He had a grudge against the VT campus, professors and students. He used all the ammo one man can carry. The group was clearly the target here.
* Something pushed that grudge over the edge today.
* He was not crazy. There was too much planning here (two guns, chains for the doors) for this to be some heat-of-the-moment event (though the slaying of his girlfriend may have been). Also, he committed suicide at the end of it all. If he was psychotic, he would have felt nothing, especially not suicidal feelings.

I’m going to add one more thing. A prediction. I predict that before the investigation and media tragedy-whoring is over it will come out that this guy was enduring some kind of slow anxtie emotional burn. A happy, well-adjusted person doesn’t slaughter 32 people and themselves. A psychotic doesn’t come all the way from China to study at Virginia Tech. Something happened to this guy, either in China or here that allowed him to watch the spurting blood and listen to the wailing of his classmates, bullet after bullet after bullet. 32 people is a lot of bullets, a lot of blood, and a lot of screams. I suspect that after all the screaming around him had died down, it was the screaming left in his head that made him fire the very last bullet.

No barrel on a firearm minimizes, not maximizes energy.

The bullet is accelerating until just after it leaves the barrel.

The longer the barrel, the more velocity with the same load (up to some ridiculous extreme where the expanding gas can no longer push as hard – for a 22 that’s probably an 8-10 foot long barrel (don’t have the figures handy).

On another subject mentioned here, the M4 is a great submachinegun, just not much of an MBR. :) Actually the M4 is a carbine, but it’s on the low ragged end of the energy range for something like an MBR.

An M14 would be better. A lightweight M14 would be better still. The M4 would, especially with the HK 416 upper, make an awesome backup for snipers or heavy subgun, especially with the option of C-mags (100rd dual drum magazines).

A horrific tragedy has just occured at Virginia Tech:
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) – A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. The gunman was killed, but it w…..

That is assuming the enemy cares about it’s troops. Soviet Russia didn’t much.

You’d think not, and it’s pretty clear survival of the individual in Stalin’s army of WW2 was infamously not a priority. But there are some surprising things to be found later on. For instance, in the jet age Soviet ejection seats, particularly the later ones, were (and for that matter still are) utterly outstanding, and easily a match for, if not clearly superior to, their western counterparts. (Of course, considering the costs of training pilots, this might have more to do with simply protecting one’s investments than respecting life per se–coupled, of course, with some solid engineering).

Also, a look at the treatment of the wounded during the Soviet stint in Afghanistan would be interesting. I’ve no doubt the medical care they received pales in comparison to the stuff US forces have available to them in the field today, but I still doubt that, unless they were under active duress to do so, any soldier anywhere would be inclined to completely ignore the needs of his injured comrades (no pun intended). So I have to assume the wounded would at least have to have been carried away by a couple of men, administered some sort of first aid, medevacced, etc., much like western troops. Anybody have specific information about how this actually was handled?

None of this is intended to root in retrospect for the bad guys, of course. The Soviet military model obviously had issues. I just have difficulty believing the strict Stalinist model of troop care could have long survived Stalin.