Virginia Tech shooter bought gun for $571

[Bolt_Gundam510]

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- The student who killed 32 people and himself Monday at Virginia Tech paid $571 for a 9 mm Glock 19 pistol just over a month ago, the owner of Roanoke Firearms told CNN Tuesday.

John Markell said Cho Seung-Hui was very low-key when he purchased the gun and 50 rounds of ammunition with a credit card in an "unremarkable" purchase.

Cho presented three forms of identification and state police conducted an instant background check that probably took about a minute, the store owner said.

Cho did not say why he wanted the gun, Markell said.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said he wasn't interested in arguments about gun control.

"People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them," Kaine said at a Tuesday evening news conference.

Shooter's writings 'twisted'

A fellow student said Cho had written two plays so "twisted" that his classmates suspected he might become a school shooter.

Ian McFarlane, who said he had class with Cho, called the plays "very graphic" and "extremely disturbing."

McFarlane is an employee of AOL, which has provided the writings to CNN.

"It was like something out of a nightmare," McFarlane wrote in a blog. "The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of.

"Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."

A university official also said that Cho scribed writings so "disturbing" they were sent to administrators, a university official said Tuesday.

It also railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Cho, a resident alien from South Korea, was a 23-year-old English major who lived at the university's Harper Hall, Flinchum said. (Note: Cho Angry at "rich kids")

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations.

Cho came to the United States in 1992, through Detroit, Michigan, a department of Homeland Security official said. He had lawful permanent residence, via his parents, and renewed his green card in October 2003, the official said.

Doctor recalls 'amazing' injuries

A doctor at a Blacksburg hospital described the injuries he saw Monday as "amazing" and the shooter as "brutal."

"There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital. (Doctor: "This man was brutal")

A source familiar with the investigation said the weapons found at Norris were a Walther .22-caliber semiautomatic and a 9 mm Glock 19 -- both with the serial numbers filed off.

As questions continued to arise about how police reacted to the first shooting at the dorm, university President Charles Steger on Tuesday defended the response, saying police believed it to be "a domestic fight, perhaps a murder-suicide" that was contained to one dorm room.

The gunman killed 31 people, including himself, and wounded 15 in four Norris Hall classrooms and a stairwell, Flaherty said.

Student heard clip drop to ground

Zach Petkewicz was in class when the shooting at Norris began and "everyone went into a frenzy, a panic." Petkewicz was hiding behind a podium when he realized there was nothing preventing the shooter from entering the classroom and barked to his classmates, "We need to barricade this door."

Classes have been canceled for the rest of the week, and Norris Hall will be closed for the remainder of the semester, Steger said. Emily Alderman, who works at a clothing store near campus, said students were sending out instant messages urging one another to wear their Virginia Tech Hokie gear in a sign of unity.

Last August, the first day of class was cut short at Virginia Tech by a manhunt for an escaped prisoner accused of killing a Blacksburg hospital security guard and a sheriff's deputy.

Before Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States occurred in 1991, when George Hennard drove a pickup truck into a Killeen, Texas, cafeteria and fatally shot 23 people before shooting and killing himself.

Source: CNN U.S.

[dMog]

the biggest problem is that your country lives and breathes "the gun culture" and has done so since the days of the wild west...think about it...guns are and have been glorified in the USA more so than in any other culture. is it any wonder that a nut case when he finally does flip his wig goes out and gets a gun or guns to use...knowing full well he will have in place in history thanks to the main stream media of the entire world.

on another thought, i know the guys i grew up with if faced with a guy standing a doorway shooting at us all... well, we would all rush him and jump him and pretty much beat him to death rather take a chance as a sitting duck hoping he will not see us or miss us... At the very least actions like that will allow others to escape. if every time a nut went out and did this in the future and people rushed them and beat them to death they crazies would be saying to themselves... well i go to a school and start shooting i am only going to get 3 or 4 kills before they kill me so maybe i just won't.

[masterripper]

the biggest problem is that your country lives and breathes "the gun culture" and has done so since the days of the wild west...think about it...guns are and have been glorified in the USA more so than in any other culture. is it any wonder that a nut case when he finally does flip his wig goes out and gets a gun or guns to use...knowing full well he will have in place in history thanks to the main stream media of the entire world.

What the hell, so your saying basically that because we happen to sell guns here, that automatically means that when someone goes crazy their going to use a gun to commit their crime, hey guess what, we also sell dynamite here, but you dont see ppl robbing stores with dynamite, its all because it depends on what the crazy person wants to use to commit their crime, some would use a gun, some would use a knife/sword (no lie) others would use a airplane (9/11 incident), oh and even if it wasnt so easy anymore to buy a gun here in America, if someone is crazy enough to go on a mass killing spree and kill 32 ppl, they wouldnt be afraid to break the law by illegally obtaining a gun. Plus other countries are even more "Gun-sy" (like Iraq) how come you dont say that Iraq is living in the "Gun culture" hmm, could it be because you just like to jump on the bandwagon with the other "cool" kids that "hate America"?

on another thought, i know the guys i grew up with if faced with a guy standing a doorway shooting at us all... well, we would all rush him and jump him and pretty much beat him to death rather take a chance as a sitting duck hoping he will not see us or miss us... At the very least actions like that will allow others to escape. if every time a nut went out and did this in the future and people rushed them and beat them to death they crazies would be saying to themselves... well i go to a school and start shooting i am only going to get 3 or 4 kills before they kill me so maybe i just won't.

I do agree with you there, i mean why sit there like sitting ducks with no protection and let some asshat keep shooting ppl, except instead of "raiding" the shooter, i think more ppl should carry guns, i mean we do have concealed gun permits over here, USE THEM, i personally have a CCW issued gun permit, and i always carry my 44 magnum revolver on me, and you can damn well bet that if im in a convience store (or any building for that matter) and someone storms in with a gun to rob or shoot ppl, im gonna be whipping out my gun to either scare them off, make them surrender, or to put him down provided he has started shooting until the police arrive. if more of us "good guys" carried guns on us (legally of course) then bad guys would start thinking twice from now on before deciding to rob or shoot ppl.

[dMog]

i don't hate America..... but really you do live in a gun culture...all your laws there permit guys like that to do what they did with ease... look at how easy it is for all the people that did these crimes to access guns legally and Iraq has a totally different culture

[Thunder-GOLD]

I'm agree with dMog

[alaindc]

i'm very sorry for what happen ;) , but i agree with dMog too.

in the US, having a weapon is nearly as easy as buying some beer.

it's in your culture.

that reflect in videogames. most parent will buy any violent game, with guns killing, blood, gore, to their underage child...but if a small amount of flesh is seen, they will protest like it's the end of the world.

violent games can even get a teen rating sometime, but any nudity will grant a Mature or AO(sex) rating

so...violence and guns are ok, but any nudity is bad.

yes, if "good" people can carry their guns in school, probably that less peoples would have been kill.

BUT

it's also possible that a "good" people, in a bad day, would kill someone.

also, this guy just buy his guns, a day or so before this killing, and the police check his info, and it was a "good" people. how many other "good" people like him would kill someone if guns are allow in the campus?

violence and guns don't solve all problems...

you carry your gun everywhere you go, it's exactly the "culture" we talk about.

having a gun, and even keeping it on you all the time is normal to you.

not to us.

we have nothing against you, or the US, but your "culture" isn't ours.

[Chicano666]

Come on, its not that we hate the US but just take a look at those old western movies, its always guns, guns, guns. Iraq being having a gun culture, what do you have to say to support your argument? Corporate media news? (which only tell you what they want you to know). The only ones that have guns in Iraq are the rebels and military as for the rest of the population, well there too busy trying to get enough resources to survive in their torn country (thanks in no small part to the US). The average American cannot be compared to the average Iraqi, specially since their Gov't wasn't as "open" as ours (which is why we went there in the first place) as to allow the regular citizen to obtain a gun.

[toyo]

we dont hate america, but surely it sux... badly ;))

[dMog]

America does NOT suck...it is one of the best places to live in the world. Do any of you people know that in most countries in the world that if you speak out or even joke about the government you (and many times you family) simply disappear...and this is not the bad people coming in and simply relocating you...they come in and kill you. I personally know of several people that were once university students in a country i will not name who spoke out about the oppression of their freedoms by there government. Do you know what the official response of that government was...they sent in the army slit the throats of 300 protesters and them smashed open the victims heads so the brains would spill out...this as warning.... These people i know had to flee their country with their entire extended families running away as the army was shooting at them killing about 1/2 of their numbers before finally getting to safety in Kenya. the official response form NATO was none it happened because it cannot be proved. this has been going on for over 30 years in this country...where is the rest of the to speak out and stop this.. America does thats who.... Canada does also but the rest of the world tells us to stay out other countries "politics" Then people like you and me hear of this stuff and and say oh well it's not us so we don't really care and we wonder why guys go off the deep end and pick up a gun and do something like take it school or where they work and begin to kill...

[nsane]

me and lite were just debating this the other day :lol:

in the US, having a weapon is nearly as easy as buying some beer.

so when i buy a case of beer they fingerprint me and make me wait 72 hours before i can actually drink the beer? because that's what they did to me when i bought my handgun ;)

but a better approach to the whole situation would be to stop allowing clinicly insane freaks to buy guns. basically, instead of just doing a criminal background check on everyone make the freaks take a psych test to prove they're competent enough to own a firearm. because there's plenty of people out there that safely own guns and simply know better than to shoot other people with them (unless it's defensively). basically the guy was just crazy and happened to use a gun instead of some other weapon. and if he wasn't able to buy the gun like he did he would've found out another way to kill all those people (chained doors and gas bombs or something -- which would probably have killed more people).

btw, the guy was from SOUTH KOREA so don't try and use the "he was brought up to use guns" crap here. he was only the country for SCHOOL so that's not even an issue in this topic. the only things you're really proving by doing so is your biased opinion on firearms and that you'll use any opportunity force it on people (check the Buddha quote in my profile for my thoughts on forcing opinions on people) ;)

[Chicano666]

True, I believe he had a record or something that mentioned his mental instability so if a mental history background checked would've been performed the gun would've never been sold. You won't deny though that the US DOES have a culture built around guns (Cowboys anyone?) but thats not the main point. I don't think anyone specifically said (correct me if I'm wrong) he "was raised to use guns", what was linked was that the US has a sort of fascination with guns (just watch the show "Future Weapons") and thus almost anyone can legally purchase a gun; which he took advantage of and bought the gun and well used it.

[dMog]

they only finger print you if you buy form a dealer....if you buy from a PRIVATE collector of guns the collector does NOT even have to report the sale... same applies if you buy a gun a from a gun show....yes the guy was crazy and no laws could have prevented this...if he really wanted a gun and even if there wee laws in place from preventing him to legally purchase he could have bought it off the street and most likely for less than he paid legally

[kazaaman]

they only finger print you if you buy form a dealer....if you buy from a PRIVATE collector of guns the collector does NOT even have to report the sale... same applies if you buy a gun a from a gun show....yes the guy was crazy and no laws could have prevented this...if he really wanted a gun and even if there wee laws in place from preventing him to legally purchase he could have bought it off the street and most likely for less than he paid legally

Tru dat, if Cho really wanted to, he would have gotten it from somewhere else. Things like this have something in similar. Cho had suffered greatly in his life one time and since he had a mental imbalance, he took it to the extreme which a normal person would never do. I read that he was bullied and hassled a LOT in high school, do to his unique characteristics and he took this to the extreme. His irregular brain interpreted these actions as "Everyone is out to get me, so I've to protect myself."

Bullying is what needs to be prevented more. This is undoubtedly a very, very hard task as it is a part of human nature. When someone sees something/someone they don't like and is "superior" to them, they will use this advantage to do as they please. So next time you see someone getting bullied, don't be a coward and join the jeering crowd, instead reach out to the victim and do some good.