Another school massacre
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Wednesday, April 18, 2007
There are lots of funerals to plan after Monday at Virginia Tech. Thirty-three, so far, including the killer who -- as this is being written on Tuesday -- apparently is solely responsible for the deaths of 32 fellow students and faculty members, and dozens of injuries to others.
Though it is difficult to conceive of such a thing, the shooting rampage in Blacksburg, Va., is not the worst mass killing at a school in U.S. history; there was one worse, a series of bombings at an elementary in Bath, Mich., in 1927, which claimed 45 lives. But the Virginia Tech incident follows a distressing string of mass shootings at schools and other public places -- including most recently Salt Lake City's Trolley Square.
The authorities are still sorting out the facts of the case, even as a few surviving students fight for their lives in area hospitals. Social-interaction Web sites like MySpace and Facebook have been used by thousands of Virginia Tech students, their families and friends to get the word out about who lived, who died and who was injured.
Because the scenes of the shootings were so chaotic, law enforcement officials say they are being careful to sort through the evidence, and that they will not reveal the identities of all those killed until they have positively identified each one.
As the information is revealed, the nation mourns the loss of such bright and promising students. It seems especially tragic that young people are cut down at an age when they should be able to look forward to a life filled with rewarding experiences.
As law enforcement goes about its business in the case, it will fall to university and civic officials to analyze what might have been done -- if anything -- to reduce the loss of life. Still perplexing is the fact that two people were murdered in a dorm on one side of campus, then two hours later about half a mile away 30 more people were killed in classrooms, and at least some of them with the same weapon that was used in the dorm shooting.
Should the campus have been locked down immediately upon report of the dorm incident?
Also worth discussing is Virginia Tech's policy of not allowing firearms to be carried on campus by students, even if they have concealed-carry permits.
Had that restriction not been in place, might the shooter (or shooters?) have been thwarted before killing and injuring so many? Maybe, or maybe not -- but the discussion is relevant to Utahns, since the Legislature recently changed the state code to allow lawfully permitted concealed weapons to be carried most places on public university campuses. (Brigham Young University, a private school, continues to restrict firearms from being carried on campus by students.)
For the time being, Blacksburg joins the growing list of cities known for killings at local schools, including Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; Springfield, Ore.; Littleton, Colo.; Santee, Calif.; and Nickel Mines, Penn. It probably is too much to hope for, given this grisly history of unhinged, narcissistic killers preying on schools and our nation's culture of widely available firearms. So the effort will be to figure out ways to save lives in future attacks.
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