Virginia Tech - Still in mourning

Yeah, I know I don’t often give my opinion on this blog thing, but being ex-federal law enforcement and a private op now, I guess I ought to say something about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I got to admit, as a resident of Southeast Washington DC, my first reaction when I heard about all the shooting was...WHERE? I mean, where I live I expect to hear guns go off in the middle of the night. But Blacksburg, Virginia is the opposite of the kind of environment where you expect violence. By most measures it’s one of the best places in the country to live, a peaceful, suburban college community where average income, education level and church attendance are all way above the national average. There is no way to understand why such a tragedy would happen there, and I think it’s the horror you can’t predict that’s the scariest.

Right after that is everybody searching for something to blame it on. I’ve already heard all the anti-gun screamers out there. And I’ll even admit it’s a reasonable point of debate. But, damn it, not NOW. It was only a week ago. People are hurting. It’s wrong for their expression of grief to get hijacked by any political agenda. You bet there’s people who think the guns are the reason for the violence. You can bet there’s also people thinking that if I was in the building, or if anybody else was there who was armed and properly trained, the body count would have been a lot lower.

But the truth is, we ought to leave the blame-casting and fault finding for later. Let's just take a few more days to stare in horror at the things human beings can do to one another, and mourn the innocents.