Previous University Shooting In Virginia Stopped By Armed Citizens
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Guns and Ammo, History, LawFound this Wikipedia entry on reddit…
On January 16, 2002, Peter Odighizuwa, 43, of Nigeria, a student at Appalachian School of Law, arrived on the campus. While it was widely reported at the time that Odighizuwa had flunked out of school, he had evidenty voluntarily withdrawn because of his poor academic performance.Odighizuwa first discussed his academic problems with professor Dale Rubin, where it is reported that he told Rubin to pray for him. Odighizuwa then walked to the offices of Dean Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell, where Odighizuwa opened fire with a .380 ACP semi-automatic handgun. According to a county coroner, powder burns indicated that both people were shot at point blank range. Killed along with the two staff members was a student, Angela Denise Dales, age 33. Three other people were wounded. [...]
When Odighizuwa exited the building where the shooting took place, he was approached by two students with personal firearms. At the first sound of gunfire, fellow students Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross (an off-duty police officer), unbeknownst to the other, had run to their vehicles to grab their personal firearms (with Bridges pulling his .357 Magnum pistol from beneath the driver’s seat of his Chevy Tahoe). As Bridges later told the Richmond Times Dispatch, he was prepared to shoot to kill.
Bridges and Gross approached Odighizuwa from different angles, with Bridges yelling at Odighizuwa to drop his gun. Odighizuwa then dropped his firearm and was subdued by a third student, Ted Besen, who was unarmed. Once Odighizuwa was securely held down Gross went back to his vehicle and retrieved handcuffs to help hold Odighizuwa until police could arrive. Police reports noted there were two empty eight round magazines belonging to Odighizuwa’s handgun. It is unclear whether Odighizuwa ran out of ammunition or if there was still a round in the chamber at the time that he dropped his firearm.
I think that speaks for itself.
UPDATE:
But by the way, this post wasn’t written to suggest that the kids should have rushed the guy. I’m just saying that the armed society has its advantages when people go nuts.
And that’s why I think John Derbyshire’s comments about non-armed students confronting Cho are moronic and dangerous…
As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sakeâ€â€?one of them reportedly a .22.At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damageâ€â€?your chances aren’t bad.
Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goesâ€â€?and like most cliches. It’s trueâ€â€?none of us knows what he’d do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.
Yeah, that’s the first thing I’d think of when somebody was shooting at me. And then I’d wait for just the right time and give him a roundhouse kick to the face, knock him out and kiss the nearest woman because I’m such a bad ass.
Seriously, what a moron.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. Next we have Nathanael Blake from Human Events Online rocking the “action hero” meme in a post entitled “Where Were The Men?”
College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.
I’m not saying that I hope John and Nathaniel are confronted with a situation like Virginia Tech in the future, but if they ever were, I hope they run, hide and live to see another day. You know…the human thing to do.
Students of Virginia Tech…you did absolutely nothing wrong. And don’t let a couple of hacky, wimpy bloggers tell you otherwise.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 and is filed under Guns and Ammo, History, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:31 am
oddly enough, so does a competent security staff that doesn’t let campus run as usual after two people are shot…
an “armed society” may look great on paper, but it opens up a whole bunch of other worm-filled cans that you would never even think of because it’s never happened. as with everything.
crap, we’ve got school teachers screwing their 13 year old students. obviously not a subset of the populace that gets the “best judgement” award.
what if cops rushed in whilst an “armed citizen” was shooting mr. cho? who would the cop shoot? how would he know who was the original shooter?
armed populace is just a fantasy land. the grass is greener over there simply because you’re not there.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:37 am
also: i think it does speak for itself, if you think it says the armed students still didn’t stop the killings. who’s to say the guy would have killed more??
hell, who’s to say cho would have DROPPED HIS WEAPON?
this argument is ridiculous.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Nathanael Blake: Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture.
Well at least he shows a slight amount of self-awareness. There is something wrong. Too many losers like him have macho fantasies of kicking ass and taking names even though they are old, weak and stupid.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:48 am
I am all for off duty cops carrying keeping a firearm in his car. I just don’t think it is a good idea for college freshmen to have a pistol/rifle in his/her dorm room.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I do not buy into the chicken-egg argument that an armed citizenry is good security against crime, including this sort of crime. If guns weren’t available to nut-jobs like this Cho, nut-jobs like Cho wouldn’t have guns. While I don’t know whether or how gun laws would work now that so many morons own automatic weapons and handguns, I certainly am not prepared for gun-fights at my child’s college campus. If a lot of drunken 18-21 year olds boiling over with testosterone had handguns under their beds, there would be blood all over the walls all the time.
I knew one of the people killed in the shooting at the Appalachian School of Law, a terrible tragedy. And there were motives there that obviously did not apply to Cho. It’s not clear that the killer intended to open fire on everyone in sight, I think.
At any rate, thanks very much for drawing the distinction that Blake and Derbyshire failed to draw: THE STUDENTS AT VIRGINIA TECH WERE ALL UNARMED AND ALL TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I think armed citizens could definitely help in these types of sistuations, as the example Justin provides above demonstrates. That doesn’t mean I think college freshman should be armed; I believe the law requires that the person be at least 21 years old to carry a weapon.
Police can’t respond quickly enough in these types of situations. I don’t know how else to combat crazies hell bent on killing as many people as he can before killing themselves.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
It must be nice to sit at a desk and pontificate on the application of fight/flight syndrome, eh? Of course, some will take a radical approach for gun control because of a deranged individual. OTOH, I don’t think the gun control folks have considered not owning a car because deranged people get drunk and drive; or people hurt and kill others with road rage.
Wild west syndrome of arming to the teeth may not be a very good idea either … but then again, if you put the bad guy down and live to tell about it being armed looks pretty good.
Responding to violence with physical defense or offense (armed or unarmed) seems to be a reactive trait that one has or doesn’t have. The guy who put a stop to Sylvia Seegrist at Springfield Mall in Springfield, PA in the 80’s was un-armed …. he just reacted … to great benefit of many scared individuals.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
[...] Find out more about two brave souls, and then check out the moronic, “manly” comments of two action-hero obsessed bloggers who think the current students should have done the same thing and fought the gunman… At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damageâ€â€?your chances aren’t bad. [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
In the long run I doubt the general availability of guns (or absence of same) would make much difference, either in overall violent crime rates or in mass attacks like this one.
Any weapon or other countermeasure we can take against crime, once it becomes sufficiently commonplace, is only likely to work for a limited time before criminals pick up on it and adapt. This adaptation need not mean just getting a bigger or more powerful weapon than yours; adjusting their tactics should more than suffice. Firing at a crazed gunman who is threatening you is one thing. Firing at a crazed gunman who, before proceeding to threaten you, took some sweet old lady hostage for use as a human shield against your gun is another thing entirely.
If “Ismail-AX” (as the shooter apparently called himself, a revelation that has raised some eyebrows on certain other blogs due to “Ismail”’s Muslim connotations) knew he would be facing an armed student body, that doesn’t necessarily mean he would have been deterred. He might simply have planned his attack much differently, to minimize the risk to himself and/or maximize the carnage he could inflict before being taken down. Homemade bombs are one alternative method that comes to mind.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Frankly I’ve always been against anyone having guns in today’s high-pressure social environment. Way too many people crack each day, and with even handguns available, they’re far more likely to kill someone when the pressure gets too much for them. Plus, if I recall this correctly, our society has the highest gun-assisted crime rate of all industrialized nations by far.
Unfortunately, with the boatloads of cash the gun lobby keeps shoveling into the Republican party, it’s unlikely that any reasonable universal measures will ever get put into place, such as a federal registration database for all firearms, total ban on all automatic and semi-automatic weapons, etc.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Good Point Joshua. He may have for example dropped by his local “spy store” and bought a kevlar vest. Those that make the argument that being able to carry a concealed weapon on campus would have prevented such a heinous crime have an inherently flawed point of view. Here in TX less than 10% of those eligible to carry a concealed weapon actually do. Conversely VA is an open carry state meaning thats as long as the gun is blatantly visible it is legal. Exceptions being schools, govt. property, and anywhere booze is served. VA also offers concealed carry permits which again less than 10% of the population opt for. So had VA Tech allowed law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons on campus the odds of Mr, Cho meeting armed resistance would have still been low enough to not be a deterrent, particularly to one as messed up as he was.
April 19th, 2007 at 6:49 am
The armed citizenry argument is just thin smoke, as it presumes that all those people with guns would be responsible, level headed good citizens.
It’s more realistic to assume that for every responsible gun owner, you would be arming at least one who isn’t.
Among college youth, the odds are even higher, I bet.
That would be inviting open shooting season in public places.
As far a I’m concerned, the NRA is a cult.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Oh yeah, Justin? That’s exactly what one teacher did. He died, but he saved a whole class of his students. A little more courage is exactly what’s needed.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
“Someone who is willing to die to accomplish their goal is virtually unstoppable.” That’s a paraphrase from the Secret Service Protective Detail. They are the best bodyguards in the world and they know that the only chance they have to stop a killer who is willing to die is to be willing to die themselves. That point was made on both sides of the Va Tech Shootings – Cho was willing to die to accomplish has goal of killing as many people as possible…and the professor was willing to die to save his students. Both succeeded.
It has also been said that “An armed populace is a polite populace.” One need only look to Switzerland, where virtually every male between 18 and 45 has a government-issued firearm at home…and a homicide rate 1/5 that of the US.
Finally, what about the the school shootings in Grundy, VA in 2002 or Pearl, MS in 1997 or Edinboro, PA in 1998? In each case, 1 or 2 armed people kept a tragedy from turning into massacre. What a shame that the students and faculty of Va Tech were denied the opportunity to save their own lives and the lives of others.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Abu – this whole notion of “courage” is a tired cultural remnant of the barbarous chauvism embedded in the Western concept of masculinity. Courage means death. Courage means war. I agree with Justin, to coward is human; “To die with honor” and all that, cultural constructs necessary for the submission of man’s rational instinct for service to the state, a death service. In this Hobsian universe no amount of posthumous waxing poetic on “courage” is going to truly buff the corpse of the “brave.” I would have probably used the good Professor’s back to help me leap out of the window as I elbowed and kicked anyone in my way. Courage – pure bunkum in these post-modern adrogyous times; part-in-parcel of a code of ethics derived from fairy tales. The wages of bravery is death and it is only the craven coward that is rewarded with life and it is the living that do all the remembering. Sure, there will be temporary lauds for the “courageous” and, of course, the obligatory memorial with the perfunctory tulips – but the silent sentiment will ring “Glad it wasn’t me.” The focus will not be on understanding the “courageous” – screw courage, it gets you killed. No, the focus will be on “understanding” a fuckwit and his unrequited fantasy of kissing a girl and what music he listened to and what movies he watched, and did he jerkoff with left hand or right and blah, blah, ad nauseum, while those in need of justifying a psychology degree with a communications minor (or visa versa) draw inane conclusion which protend the obvious — coming of the next fuckwit. Courage means nothing, we don’t want to know anything about it, because we already know where it gets you. The courageous don’t interest us. The deviant self-absorbed loser shitheel, now there is a character we can relate to.
Go Hogies and arm-up next time.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Dan, you’re right. Cho would not have dropped his weapon. But didn’t the kid say he was prepared to shoot to kill? If he had confronted cho and shot him, it all would have been over! Being a gun owner myself, and on a SWAT team, the argument is legitimate. No, I am not encouraging armed students to approach gunmen, but I personally have seen incidents stopped by citizens with personal arms.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Why are people so willing to live like slaves?
Responsible gun ownership is not a crime. Some founding fathers called it a duty as a matter of fact. How about the fact that these killers are always on excessive doses of serotonin reuptake inhibitors?
February 25th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Tough crowd. Ya know I think that everyone has the right to bear arms. I was mulling over all of these blogs and thought “o.k. give anyone who has no record of crime or mental instability a license for a fire arm with a 2 month course of training and evaluation on paper and in the firing range”. But like anything else that becomes a provision of “The System”, there will be people that slip through the cracks or people going in healthy by appearence, then committing a heinus crime. You will always have these problems. And the other problems that go with it. The one trained person that makes a fatal shooting error. The poor judgements that even the most experienced will make especially in the heat of the moment. But aside from all of that I will say this. That I would rather take my chances on the “shakiest gun in the U.S.” who is licensed to give me the slimmest chance of survival, before being gunned down with no chance at all. Man what an awful thing that these people and their families have to endure. I hope for myself and every other law abiding innocent that we never have to see or experience anything of the like. I could attain a license for a fire-arm, but have not yet decided to do so. But heres some food for thought. If I am ever in a situation like that and the perpetrator runs out of ammo. The remnants of my actions will have alot of people wondering who the unstable person was in the scenario.