Posted on 04/21/2007 12:27:09 PM PDT by wagglebee
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - Students at Virginia Tech university prepared for funerals on Saturday for nearly a dozen shooting victims and extended a note of forgiveness to the gunman who killed 32 people on campus.
A small tribute to Seung-Hui Cho, who shot his victims then himself on Monday, has been added to a growing memorial of stones in the center of the sprawling university in southwest Virginia.
"I just wanted you to know that I am not mad at you. I don't hate you," read a note among flowers at a stone marker labeled for Cho. "I am so sorry that you could find no help or comfort."
The note, one of three expressing sorrow and sympathy for the gunman, a mentally disturbed English major, was signed "With all my love, Laura." A purple candle burned and a small American flag stood in the ground nearby.
Other memorial stones were decorated with objects including flags from Canada, Peru, and Israel for victims who came from those countries.
Nearly a dozen funerals and services for victims were planned on Saturday in Blacksburg and across the United States.
Mourners wearing the school's orange and maroon colors wandered the campus, adding flowers and scrawling messages of grief on makeshift memorials on the university grounds.
Graduate student Chris Chabalko, 29, said adding a stone memorial for Cho was fair.
"He was a student. Thirty-three people died," said Chabalko. "There's nothing anyone can do about it now. We've got to remember them equally."
Cho's family issued a heartbroken apology on Friday for the actions of the 23-year-old, who moved to Virginia with his family from South Korea when he was a child.
"He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare," the family said in a statement.
(The order of Cho's name has been changed in line with his family's practice. He had been previously identified by police and university officials as Cho Seung-Hui.)
QUESTIONS, HEIGHTENED ALERT
Questions remained about how Cho, who had been investigated after stalking complaints in 2005 and treated for mental illness, was able to buy the two guns he used in the rampage.
Under federal law, Cho should have been barred from buying a gun, but wording differences with a Virginia law allowed him to legally get a weapon, a state law professor said.
"A person who has been found in a commitment proceeding to be a danger to himself and committed to out-patient care ... is disqualified from purchasing a firearm under federal law," Richard Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia's Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, told Reuters.
But under state law, he said, the prohibition only appears to extend to people who have been committed to a hospital, which Cho was not.
As a result, his details would not have been captured by an FBI background check system used by gun sellers.
"It is not a new problem. It has been festering for many years," Bonnie said.
The United States remained jittery following several security scares, and a hostage-taking at NASA in Texas on Friday that left two people dead.
Authorities in Minnesota said a U.S. veteran of the Iraq war was hospitalized after two pipe bombs were found in a pickup truck on Friday at a college in New Ulm.
The discovery on Friday prompted a brief evacuation of the Martin Luther College campus, while the bombs were removed.
The bombs did not appear related to the Virginia Tech shootings, New Ulm police Sergeant Steve Depew said.
First lady Laura Bush said in an interview with Fox New Channel scheduled to air on Saturday that despite the pain of the shootings, "Virginia Tech will be able to move on from it, and there will be a day there where everyone won't think every moment about their loss. But it's tough."
Who said anything about “hate?”
This means that his office and lab were likely in Norris Hall. He may have been in the building at the time of the shooting.
Ok. Take hate out. Maybe that was just an impression from many of the other postings on the thread. Love begets forgivness and hate does not.
If Christ can forgive Judas then it seems like Christians could find room in their heart to forgive Cho. But then, I am not a Christian so I should probably STFU.
In MY faith it's not just a good idea, it's a requirement. Not that I can always meet that requirement.
“Paying tribute” is different than “forgiving”....this article was about students “Paying tribute.”
tribute definition
n.
1. A gift, payment, declaration, or other acknowledgment of gratitude, respect, or admiration: put up a plaque as a tribute to his generosity.
2. Evidence attesting to some praiseworthy quality or characteristic: Winning the scholarship was a tribute to her hard work.
3.
Forgiveness, yes. Though it is too late for forgiveness for the now deceased Korean killer. It is not possible for us to forgive the dead. The dead are answerable only to God.
The problem is that these deluded kids are emoting sorrow and sympathy for this evil gunman. It makes no sense at all.
In John 1 we are told: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
The “if” in John’s statement leads me to believe that, on at least some level, the granting of forgiveness is conditional upon requesting forgiveness. I feel that if confession were not an important part of the process, John would not have included it in this statement.
Dear Catholic, you should know the answer to that. All sins are committed against God, so any offense anywhere was in Jesus' power to forgive. With that said, we should remember that Jesus talked about hell more than he talked about heaven, so I think it's safe to say this fellow won't be in the good place terrorizing the faithful.
Yes. We are told to forgive by Jesus himself. But, understand also that He made clear that if the price of Heaven was perfect adherence to the Law, no one would make it, not one.
I have no feelings about this. It’s weird. I feel nothing.
I believe one of the theives did.
If I were in charge, the person who made this comment would get their citizenship revoked and they'd be deported to a miserable socialist island where they can 'judge each other' as little as they please.
The inability to see evil is almost more grievous than the thoughtless, often insane murderers.
Also, it is easy for you to play keyboard priest, and as one who was NOT personally wronged and had family murdered to tell others they should forgive. How haughty and presumptous of you! Leave those decisions to God and to those burying their kin. The rest of us can and should express anger and disgust with the lowlife, deranged paranoid asshole who butchered so many young lives for his own selfish aggrandizement. Encouraging everyone to let go of their anger less than a week after the slaughter and to equate that scum with the other lives taken that day is sick.
Actually I’m with them on this point. Re-posting what I posted on another thread:
I really can’t muster any anger at the young man himself. There were so many “normal” people (students, professors, university administrators, university and outside mental health professionals, and at least one judge) who had his huge red flags waving in their faces for at least a couple of years and didn’t take any effective action. How could someone with a brain in the condition Cho’s was in be expected to take control of this situation before it was too late, when none of the “normal” people could manage to do so?
My anger is reserved for the people who could have acted and didn’t. They “just followed orders”, no matter how idiotic and dangerous the orders were. And I have an extra measure of anger for the court-appointed psychiatrist who told the court that Cho’s “insight and judgement are sound”. Uh huh, sure. Of all the relatives, schoolmates, neighbors, teachers, etc. that have publicly shared their pre-massacre impressions of Cho going back to his early childhood, not a single one has sounded as if they thought his “insight and judgement” were even remotely “sound”.
The kid didn’t come close to having the necessary social or speech skills to “put on an act” to convince a shrink he was sane. This was PC non-judgementalism at its worst, and was very likely the turning point that made this horrible outcome inevitable. With a court letting him go scot-free after a psych exam report saying this was the right course of action, the university administration and concerned students and professors had essentially hit a wall in their efforts to do something before it was too late. Cho didn’t ask to be born with severe mental problems, and the people around him who were fortunate enough not to be, failed to use their supposedly healthy brains to take common sense steps to prevent something like this.
There’s no reason to think he couldn’t have had multiple mental disorders. In fact it’s almost certain he had several. Being autistic doesn’t confer some sort of vaccination against becoming psychopathic, or schizophrenic, or anything else. But it does make it a lot less likely that other serious conditions could be successfully managed.
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