Tragedy at Tech

The place used to be so bucolic. Had a great small town feel. Its grown up a lot in the past few years. This has been a bad year for Tech.

We've discussed lots of hot-button political issues on this blog, but it is still worth noting that as soon as this story broke, contributors to this blog instantly went into pundit mode --When someone said this demonstrated a need for gun laws to control gun nuts, another responded by blaming Democrats for not allowing students to carry guns on campus.

It didn't only happen here. I was looking at NY Times, and there the discussion board had the same thing; 300+ comments about how this shows that we need more/less gun laws, etc.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/shooting-at-virginia-tech/#comment

I'm guessing that other blogs and message boards followed a similar course. We don't know who did the shootings, we don't know if it was one person or more people, we don't know anything beyond that a horrible tragedy happened, yet somehow we're all experts.

I'm sure this event will be discussed here in the future. Now is not the time. But when the time comes, we will not only have to come to terms with what happened at VT, but with how we as a society responded: by blaming each other.

Stay Puft,

I don't know about what others have said, but I have said nothing political today.

I think we can mark it down as 4/16/07 for our first agreement.

PS. I won't be tolerating any political comments on this tread. I'll be more willing to get partisan later, but not now, not here.

Preliminary reports are that the killer is a Foreign National Asian Student.

If the report is true, HE was not supposed to have a gun of any kind.

No matter what the laws are, the gangs, criminals and others who want do do harm will find a gun to do so.

All,
This is one of those times when I am in agreement with Marshmallow.

Our collective innocence just took another beating.

Singleton,
For politics look under the Webb-Gun post from a couple of weeks ago. It was rank.

Legal aliens ARE allowed to have firearms, and a CCW license. Listing who may NOT get a license, 18.2-308 E.10: "An alien other than an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States."

A commenter started the political argument, Puft, but I guess it was my responsibility to say "how dare you." It doesn't come naturally to me.

Right now I am living on a college campus, and walking around today I noticed varying reactions. There are some who don't feel a connection to the events at Virginia Tech, and are thus, relatively unaffected. But most of us are feeling a connection to those students - kids just like us - who were killed or injured or witnessed this horror: "The deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history" on a college campus.

To read more about the reactions to the Virginia Tech tragedy go to: www.orato.com

On Fox News there was a very good criminologist who spoke of "Bad-Evil" people and "Bad-Sick" people.

One can only wonder what kind of demons the shooter had been dealing with.

I've only seen one reference to his parents who apparently have been hospitalized from the shock.

My soon was walking near Norris Hall and heard the shooting. They don't know if VT will complete the semester.

Meanwhile at least 125 people were killed by bombs in Baghdad.

We have "Evil-sick" people. I think we know what Iraq has.