"This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community -- and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. We've come to express our sympathy. In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you, and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected.
Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.
It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation."--President George W. Bush, April 17, 2007
As I was running around today and listening to the news I was bothered by all the second guessing and speculation on what could've caused this tragedy. When I got home I read these words by
Mike in the comments section of my earlier post:
"Evil won't be stopped by gun control laws. And I find the immediate politicizing of this issue by gun control advocates to be nothing short of an obscenity.
Let the families grieve and bury their dead. Let the injured heal.
There's plenty of time to ask questions about what went wrong. But now is not that time."
This is exactly where I'm coming from. The
gun-control nuts are quick to rush in placing blame on guns and
Charlton Heston of all people. Everyone wants to speculate on whether it was prescription drugs, video games, a lack of morals, etc... There will plenty of time for those discussions but now is the time to grieve at the loss of life, not who is to blame.
I don't care what your view is on gun-control, the heartlessness in this article is unconscionable, Michael Daly should be ashamed of himself. Those in pain don't need to hear all the Monday morning quarterbacking, its not helpful. So many have been so quick to blame Virginia Tech officials for not warning people earlier. Today, they have already pointed out that the first shooting was thought to be a domestic disturbance which rarely turns into a mass shooting. Unless the officials were supposed to have ESP, there was probably no way for them to know what was going to transpire next.
To be honest I'm not sure anything could've prevented this. This may just be a case of a sick person snapping. Even if he was addicted to a violent video game, how many people played the same exact game and didn't go out and kill 33 people? If someone snaps and wants to kill people I'm not sure there is much that can be done. It may make some feel better to have someone or something to blame but the government didn't cause this and it can't necessarily fix it either.UPDATE:
Flopping Aces has an excellent post highlighting some of the victims.
In remembrance of all the victims:
