While the story page headline still says 22, Fox News’ main web site banner says at least 32 people are dead following a shooting at Virginia Tech University. At least 28 have been wounded. Reports say that the gunman is among the dead.
Obviously details are sketchy, but people on campus are starting to get information out via the Internet. Just as obviously, you have to take the information with a grain of salt amidst the chaos, but some are saying it was a lone Asian-American man who entered a co-ed dorm looking for his girlfriend, then lining up and executing people when he couldn’t find her. Then he reportedly went to a classroom building and went down the halls, going into rooms, firing at random and continuing on.
Like I said, who knows how much of that is accurate. Perhaps none of it. Yet already some pundits are already calling for gun control. However, Virginia Tech is already a “gun-free zone”, which in reality did nothing but prevent those who would be licensed to carry guns with them from stopping the gunman in his tracks.
Let’s pray for the victims, their families, the community at Virginia Tech, the shooter(s)’ family, and the shooter(s) himself. The only winner in a situation like this is Evil itself.
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Just for the record, the worst school shooting in history occurred in 2004 at Beslan in Russia. Chechen rebels took over the school, and in the end, 344 civilians, including 186 children, were killed.
Certainly it’s the worst in US history, but to get technical, weren’t the Beslan victims killed by bombs and mines as well?
I’m one of those people who just don’t get why we should have the right to possess or carry guns, at least in urban/suburban areas where we’re not threatened by rattlesnakes, bears and mountain lions. What is anyone going to shoot in the city? Rats? Cockroaches? Pigeons? No, just people. How many people get shot so that we can have the privilege of gun ownership? (And aren’t the guns any hunter would use different from handguns, anyhow?)
Don’t you think if there were more restrictions on guns, our country would be safer, rather than more vulnerable.
Yes, I’m going to be quiet and pray.
No I don’t. It’s the same old argument. Guns were banned from the property of Virginia Tech and we already have numerous regulations on the purchase of firearms, and thus the only armed person in those buildings at Va Tech was the murderer. Had some students or professors been able to carry arms, the man might have been deterred or at least stopped.
Consider Great Britain which, despite a ban on most firearms, has rising rates of violent gun crime. Why? Because the criminals can always get guns, even if smuggled in from outside the country and sold on the street, but law-abiding citizens cannot.
The right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment is not a right to hunt. It is a right to take up arms in defense of yourself and others and your rights.
We’ve come to believe that we have to place all of our protection in the hands of police, but we forget that much of police work is not protection, but prosecution. The polcie cannot be everywhere (and we wouldn’t want them to be) and so we must bear some responsibility for our own protection.