4/16/7 - Virginia Tech Massacre

What a tragedy. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families that lost someone yesterday. Where to start? This is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog, to record my thoughts and feelings at the moment I was witnessing history. I felt sick today. Not from this story, but just light headed and extremely tired. My family has been battling the roto-virus for the last 3 weeks and I guess in finally caught up with me. Anyway it allowed my to see some of the coverage of the scene at VT. I watched the ceremony at 2 PM, the president, governor, various others offering condolences and kind words. Nothing really stand outish. The real tragedy is not knowing if part of this could have been prevented. I suppose there will be a lot of second guessing in the weeks to come and eventually there will be some "standard" set forth to deal with this kind of incident. This was by far the the worst college shooting in the history of America. The other one of note was in Texas in 1966, when an ex-marine opened up fire from a clock tower before being gunned down by police. In Virginia the situation was a little different, the gunman had two separate targets that Monday. Cho Seung Hui, was a Korean by birth and lived in the US legally since 1992. He was set to graduate next month with an English degree, but instead decided to end his life taking 32 others in the process. The second guessing starts with the administration. He went to a dorm with an ex-girlfriend or acquaintance or something and shot her and the RA. The an hour and a half later opened fire in Norris hall killing 30 others. My thoughts are that with a shooting happening in a dormitory, you lock down the dorms and cancel the classes and post armed police at the entry of each building, because you have a responsibility to keep the students SAFE first and when a shooter is running loose on campus that is not safe. Second there were reports that this guy had written plays or stories about shooting up teachers and classmates. I know there is a certain creativity that schools try to foster, but eventually you get to a point where it is no longer "creativity" and it becomes foreshadowing. People really need to take a hard look at exactly what people are telling them and err on the side of caution. To the people at VT now, it is going to be hard but you will make it through. You have to, for all of the people that won't have a chance now. Remember God won't give you more than you can handle. You can only look at the past, and you can only go forward from here.