Professor Liviu Librescu (LIV-ee-oo lih-BRESS-cue), 76, Israel
Engineering science and mathematics lecturer. Was a holocaust survivor. (AP)
Confirmed by his wife, Marlon. Librescu had taught at Virginia Tech for 22
years and had been married for 42 years.
The class schedule indicates
Librescu was teaching Solid Mechanics in room 204 in Norris Hall.
"His
research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more
robust aerospace structures," said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering
science and mechanics department. (AP)
Librescu's son, Joe, said his father's students sent e-mails detailing how the
professor saved their lives by closing the doorway of his classroom against the
approaching gunman. (AP)
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and
asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said Tuesday in a telephone interview
from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping
out." (AP)
Here is his website, which includes his photo: http://www.esm.vt.edu/php/person.php?id=10023
76 years old, toughed out the Nazi's, taught the world a thing or two about how to make planes, and when push came to shove, didn't even blink at doing the right thing. Liviu spent his probably few remaining years to buy lifetimes for his students. Words cannot express how much I admire an unconditional love that strong. Don't know about you, but if I'm lucky enough to die this way, I'll consider my life well spent. This guy for sure is one of the people that could have been armed and able to deal with Cho had there not been a 'gun-free zone'. Then I'd be telling you how real heroes live instead.
Damn I'm pissed. The answer to criminals with guns is not taking guns away from people who obey the law. How anyone could think otherwise literally boggles my mind.
4 comments:
Call me "The Boggler", then. No time to do this justice, but I wanted to add a couple notes.
I'd heard about this professor and had similar admiration. Thanks for posting it.
As for gun control regs, I'll just say this...minimizing guns in the world HAS to minimize the number of people shot by them. Just as the boys in Columbine borrowed their legally obtained weapons from their parents, it would have been more difficult for them to do what they did, had their parents not had those guns. Maybe they would have found a way around that. But maybe not. Sure hardened criminals are going to get their guns through illegal means, but the cases that are often most shocking are not the cases of hardened criminals. They are the cases of one-time situations. And though I don't expect gun control to eliminate murder, I do expect it to reduce the carnage. The people who obey the law and get their guns legally often are the involuntary facilitators (when their guns are used/taken without their consent/knowledge). Imagine how you'd feel if your legally obtained weapon was used in what happened at VA Tech? How could anyone in that position not feel even slightly responsible? At least, I guess, I couldn't.
You are right that guns don't kill people, people kill people. But minimizing the ways that people can kill people by limiting the number of guns in circulation is a plus in my book. That's straight from chapter 1 of Boggler's Big Book of Boggley Things.
Okay, I went on more than I'd intended. Sorry.
I was really moved when I heard about this story. Thanks for keeping it alive.
With respect to SF, I believe the Columbine boys cajoled older adults (as the two of them were minors, and had psychiatric records) into buying the guns for them.
Cho took his legally acquired guns into a legally mandated 'gun-free zone'.
A criminal broke the law. Imagine that.
Perhaps, just maybe, you would consider the possibility that, just as you pick and choose which traffic laws you will obey when you zip to work or the sotre and then back home again, there are people who will pick and choose which other statutes they will obey.
Like, say, our friend Cho, who chose to obey the legal requirements for securing a handgun or two, and then chose to ignore the various laws about where he could take those guns and what he could shoot with them.
I've said it before, I will say it again. Anyone, anyone, ANYONE, now matter how bugshit insane, eating-their-own-feces, talking to thin air nutbaggery crazy as a shithouse rat they are, can play sane long enough to get through a 5-10 minute transaction if they haven't already been institutionalized for their inability to function in society. Anyone.
Someone at VT got the local or state authorities to legally mandate a 'gun-free zone' on their campus. Dandy, fine, and totally Constitutional, since it's done at the local or state level, so it's none of Congress's business. But then these feel-good motherfuckers completely failed to enforce it by putting up metal detectors, hiring armed guards, or anything else to actually make it stick.
It, like what is doubtless to be a slew of gun control legislation to come and right soon, is, was, and soon shall be nothing more than feel-good happy horseshit. More gun control laws will not stop criminals from getting and using guns.
More gun control laws will not stop criminals from getting and using guns. More gun control laws will not stop criminals from getting and using guns. More gun control laws will not stop criminals from getting and using guns. More gun control laws will not stop criminals from getting and using guns.
Enforcement of any existing gun control laws will stop criminals from getting guns legally, and that is all. It will not, cannot, and never will stop them from getting guns illegally, and using them to commit crimes, and that is why it is imperative that lawful citizens have access to firearms so they can defend themselves from gun violence.
38,000 people are killed by handguns in the US every year.
500,000 people prevent themselves or loved ones from being the victims of violent crimes in the US by protecting themselves or their loved ones with a gun each year.
Thems mighty good odds in my book.
Australia passed gun control laws resulting in the seizure of over 600,000 guns from law-abiding citizens of Australia in the last few years. Since then, violent crimes involving guns have risen an average of 8% in Australia. Behold, the power of cheese.
burn up, don't burn out. nothing left of the candle when your done.
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