17 April 2007

Some debate....

According to the little automatic e-mail I get every day from the Chronicle of Higher Education, some bloggers are debating whether or not students carrying their own guns would have prevented the massacre at Virginia Tech (see the story here). It makes my heart sink to even read the arguments in favor of that position.

I know the department chair at Virginia Tech. My heart goes out to her and all the other administrators who will be trying to help the campus grieve, remember, and heal, and to all those families who have lost someone.

Updated: to note that Trillwing has a very smart, very passionate post about gun violence today.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Somehow I don't think more guns would have helped. But perhaps that's just me.

Third Mom said...

More guns? No.

I've heard another argument that even if Cho had not had guns, he could have rampaged with knives. This is apparently happening with some regularity in Europe. Or he might have lashed out in other ways.

I have to believe, though, that tighter gun control would have kept weapons out of his hands, and the scale of the carnage wouldn't have reached the proportions it did.