I’ve thought the same thing. It’s two bad there were not some young men there as brave as those in Flight 93. I’m a bit ashamed of that — someone should have been able to take him down.”

I may be mistaken, but I think one of the surviving men from the University of Montreal shooting in 1989 may have killed himself later due to guilt over not having been able to do anything to stop the killer. However, there’s no way of telling how any of us might have reacted in that situation.

This guy had the advantage of surprise, and if my university students here are any indication, likley encountered a group of students who weren’t fully awake yet. I gather he started to fire immediately upon entering the classrooms, not giving the victims much of a chance to get away, let alone defend themselves.

I think that the guys who blocked the door to their classroom reacted pretty well, and they deserve a lot of credit for preventing the shooter from getting in.

I might add that if trained and armed soldiers have been known to run, cower in fear, or be reduced to tears in combat situations, I’m not shocked that that these university students - likely with little training or experience in life and death situations, and without any weapons - were unable to take him out.

Unfortunately, trying to make sense of this kind of event in general isn’t possible. There’s no formula that produces a satisfactory answer. Going over the “what ifs” of this kind of a situation is understandable. I’ve been running them through my head the past few days too.

He had two handguns. A group of 5 students could easily have rushed him and only one or two would have been shot.

I’ve thought the same thing. It’s two bad there were not some young men there as brave as those in Flight 93. I’m a bit ashamed of that — someone should have been able to take him down.

One thing…he was at a university, not an elementary school. By the pictures I’ve seen of him, he wasn’t physically imposing (a tall skinny guy, apparently). My guess is that if he had had a knife, a spatula, or an eggplant, it would have taken about 5 minutes for a group of students to tackle him (actually, they probably would have just laughed at him if he had the spatula and the eggplant).

You’re right. I searched for the guy’s name, and since nothing showed up i thought he hadn’t been mentioned before.

“You must admit, the number of victims wouldn’t have been as high if his weapon of choice was a spatula.”

Sure, but attacks with knifes can be just as deadly. Look at that lunatic in Japan (Osaka i think it was?). Went into a elementary school and killed 8 or 9 and injured a dozen more. And let’s not forget the guys who, instead of going down i a hail of gunfire just torch the place. The Happy Land Fire is such an example. 80-90 people killed. Sure, it didn’t have the “panache” of the Virginia shootings, but it was much more effective.
All you need to be a successful spree killer is a deranged mind.

You must admit, the number of victims wouldn’t have been as high if his weapon of choice was a spatula.

Certainly, the use of firearms, and the extraordinarily large number of victims are striking commonalities, but I believe they are simply coincidental product of circumstances in both cases.

Rather than the large number of victims or use of firearms in those cases, I find it more disturbing that both of these cases seem to involve individuals that are more suicidal rather than sociopathic. Surely some level of sociopathy must be present with people who commit such monstrous acts. I don’t know if these people can’t tell right from wrong, but it definitely seems that these people didn’t care whether it’s right or wrong because they were going to end it all anyway.

I find this very disburbing, especially considering Korea’s documented high rate of suicides. Something in the society is very rotten, when individuals are willing to throw away their lives so easily, occasionally taking many innocent people with them along the way.