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You've got to wonder when if ever their going to act on their gun ownership laws


Gunman opens fire at N. Illinois U. hall 1 hour, 13 minutes ago



DEKALB, Ill. - A man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun from a stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, injuring as many as 18 people, four critically, before he killed himself, the school's president said.

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University President John Peters said witnesses "say someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun."

The university had issued a statement on its Web site about an hour after the 3 p.m. shooting that "the immediate danger has passed. The gunman is no longer a threat."

Kishwaukee Community Hospital spokeswoman Theresa Komitas told WLS-TV in Chicago it received 17 victims all with wounds from the shooting or flying debris, including three with serious injuries. One was airlifted to another hospital.

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."

He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended too."

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."

Jillian Martinez, a freshman from Carpentersville, told the Chicago Tribune she was in the auditorium when the gunman entered through a door to the right of the lectern and opened fire about 3 p.m. "He just started shooting at all the kids," she said. "He just started shooting at people, and I ran out of there as fast as I could. I ran all the way to the student center; when I got there I could still hear shooting (from the classroom).

Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting local authorities at the scene, spokesman Thomas Ahern told the Chicago Tribune.

He said he did not know whether the shooter was a student or what his motive might have been.

"We will be urgently tracing the firearms and learning the history of the weapons," Ahern said.

All classes were canceled Thursday night and the 25,000-student campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents "as soon as possible" and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened.

The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.

On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.

I think colleges and universities need more guns. And if students won't buy them to protect themselves, they should be given them free.

It's the American way, don't you know.

America- good people, fucked society.

you could argue that oif you arm everybody they'll be able to protect themselves

sounds awfully like the wild west

That's every fossilised republican's wet dream, a return to the frontier days when men were men and enemies were consigned to Boot Hill.

All bollocks, of course. But never let the truth stand in the way of a good myth.

i read a while back they've actually started to change the laws relating to who can walk in off the street and purchase a gun

Previously the law said if you checked yourself in as a mental out patient you weren't put on the cross checking register.

Not all states mind you

One small step

Guns are not dangerous until you put them into a arms of someone. George Lucas stated that emotional educational needs to be taught in schools. Same in Ireland.

If someone calls u an asshole, if the girl u fall in love with turns out to be a slut and doesn't care how hurt u are, and u start getting over attached, possessive etc,.. etc.., deal with it, by looking at yourself and not lowering yourself to their level.

Was this guy bullied, what happened to DRIVE him to do this. And, it must have been so bad that he shot HIMSELF. Ok, good riddance u say, and I'm sorry for the families and the victims, but if this young lad was educated into dealing with pain and hurt etc. this probably wouldn't have happened and hopefully he would have just WALKED away from the situation.

In Ireland ourr suicide rate is 500 per year, yet women are now becoming independent, full of themselves, hot and hurting men by rejecting them. All it takes is for one guy to fall in love with one girl, she fecks off with someone else, then the guy analyzes and over analyzes the situation; why me , why me, until eventually he digs himself a bottomless pit until he cannot take anymore and jumps in the river.

the authorities say the suicide rate is high. Honestly, I have to say it, it's not high enough. That might sound terrible, but until emotional education is taught properly in school, the statistics will go up, not down.

Pj

A little off tangent, but did you know that a lot of the cowboys who did the cattle-drives were Welsh; allegedly. Makes one wonder that if John Wayne had sounded like Max Boyce, would he have been such a screen idol?

These shooting incidents take place in so-called "gun free zones". It is forbidden to have guns in educational establishments, so it hardly a surprise that these incidents take place there. The loony knows he has a roomful of unarmed people to slaughter before he kills himself.

The only time one of these campus shootings was stopped recently was at a law school, where a student managed to get to his handgun which he had had to keep locked in his car (it's a gun free zone), so that he could challenge the gunman. Faced with an armed person, the gunman stopped shooting and gave himself up. This incident did not receive too much publicity, because good news is no news, and the US media on the whole tends to be liberal, and therefore in favour of gun control laws. If that student had not had a handgun in his car, a lot of people would have died. Something for the gun banners to think about perhaps? As we have seen in England, a complete ban on the private ownership of handguns just means that the criminals still have guns, but the private citizens don't.

So, another maniac has killed five people - then himself.

If only they would do it the other way round.