Virginia Tech Shootings

Thirty-two are dead so far at Virginia Tech after today's shooting rampage by an as yet unidentified gunman. Kids, just kids, who were there to try and get an education. So far there is no breakdown between students and faculty deaths. This is being reported as the largest mass shooting incident ever in this country. If you do a Google search on "school shootings" you will find a time line of school shooting incidents since 1996. I ran the numbers and there have been 67 killed and 111 wounded since February, 1996. That doesn't count today's toll in Blacksburg.

The TV talking heads are already taking the aftermath reporting into the realm of the question of gun control and and going after the Virginia Tech officials about what they did or did not do. It's a natural enough part of the reporting I suppose but it seems a lot like hair trigger head hunting to me to be doing it so quickly while the authorities are still trying to sort out what happened. I wonder how many lawyers are out there training their cross hairs  on the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

Comments

[Susan]

This whole thing is truly heartbreaking. I don't understand a world that has to find someone to blame for everything - and it doesn't matter if its not the one who committed the actual crime - heck no...it was their fault that the gun was loaded and cocked and, and.....

[Cherry]

I think finding someone to blame is a way for people to feel safe. The hypothesis is that, in this instance, the school administrators did something wrong, that's why there were so many deaths. Therefore this same thing won't happen at my children's school because it's not the same administrators; or now schools will add more rules and bureaucracy and somehow this will keep tragedy from touching my life.