Gunman Kills 32 In Virginia - It's Time To Ban Guns

A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students. The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever. Investigators gave no motive for the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known whether he was a student.

Isn't it time Guns were banned in the United States? Isn't it time our children were made safe in schools? OK, even if guns were banned it might not stop something like this happening once in a blue moon but it will reduce the chance of something like this happenening. It is too easy to pick op any arsenal - whether from the home, shop or from the streets. Lets ban them NOW.

(The following has been extracted from the Telegraph Newspaper, UK 17.04.07)

Police SWAT teams now regularly visit American schools to teach students how to react to a shooting - testament to their unhappy status as one of the country’s prime killing grounds.
The current debate in the United States regarding gun control laws and the availability of firearms in the US, particularly to young people, was initially prompted by the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999.

Arguably the most shocking recent killing spree was perpetrated last October on an Amish school in Nickel Mines, a village in Pennsylvania.

The Dunblane massacre remains the deadliest attack on children in Britain. On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton, an unemployed former shopkeeper, walked into the Scottish primary school with four handguns and 743 cartridges. Sixteen children and one teacher were killed before Hamilton turned one of his guns on himself.

Until today, only one other school massacre notched up a higher death toll than Columbine. The Bath School disaster in 1927 saw 45 people die in a series of bombings in Bath Township in Michigan. Most of the victims were young school children. The killer was a school board member, Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to pay for the construction of the school building.

Some of the worst shooting incidents inside US schools and universities in recent years:
August 1966: Charles Whitman is one of the most notorious names among America’s mass killers. In August 1966 he climbed a 27-storey tower at the University of Texas in Aust in and shot passersby on the campus below before being killed by police. Fifteen people were killed, including his mother and wife, whom he had shot the night before. An autopsy found he had been suffering from a brain tumour.

October 1997: A 16-year-old boy stabs his mother, then shoots dead two students at a school in Mississippi, injuring several others.

December 1997: A 14-year-old boy kills three students in Kentucky.

March 1998: At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and killed four students and a teacher as they left the school.

April 1998: A 14-year-old shoots dead a teacher and wounds two students in Pennsylvania.

May 1998: A 15-year-old shoots dead two students in a school cafeteria in Oregon.

June1998: Two adults are hurt in a shooting by a teenage student at a Virginia high school.

April 1999: Two heavily armed teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, rampage through their school in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 24 others, before committing suicide

May 1999: A student injures six pupils in a shoot-out in Georgia.

November 1999: A 13-year-old girl is shot dead by a classmate in New Mexico.

February 2000: A six-year-old girl is shot dead by a classmate in Michigan.

March 2001: A pupil opens fire at a school in California, killing two students.

January 2002: A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, kills the dean, a professor and a student, and wounds three others.

April 2003: A teenager shoots dead the head-teacher at a Pennsylvania school, then kills himself.

May 2004: Four people are injured in a shooting at a school in Maryland.

March 2005: Jeffrey Weise, a 16-year-old high school student guns down five students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School in northern Minnesota before killing himself. He also killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend elsewhere on the Chippewa Indian reservation.

November 2005: A student in Tennessee shoots dead an assistant principal and wounds two other administrators.

September 2006: Duane Morrison, a 53-year-old drifter, takes six female high school students hostage in Bailey, Colorado, after entering Platte Canyon High School, claiming to be carrying a bomb. He sexually assaulted them and then shot one, fatally, before killing himself when police arrived.

September 2006: Two days after the Bailey killing, a 15-year-old student kills his school’s principal in western Wisconsin after telling another student “you better run".

October 2006: Charles Roberts, a 32-year-old milk truck driver takes hostages and eventually shoots 10 girls girls aged seven to 13, killing five, before shooting himself. Roberts had indicated to his wife over the phone that he had dreams about molesting children.

April 2007: A gunman kills at least 31 people in a dormitory and classroom at Virginia Tech university before being shot dead himself.