Va. Tech Shooting

Last night before going to bed I was looking at a Virginia guidebook and wondered where Virginia Tech was, because I wasn't sure what the full name of the institution was to search for it. (I had turned off the computer for the night.)

This morning I got into work, checked the news online, and, well, I found out where Virginia Tech was. But I would have rather not found out that way. Yeesh. That's really awful.

Every once in a while an event comes along that seems mandatory for bloggers to comment upon, but it's not like anybody's really going to have anything new to say right now, since we hardly know any of the details of the situation. That doesn't stop a lot of people from using the occasion to say that it proves their position on gun control, whatever that position might be. I could construct scenarios that support either side right now, but without knowing more details it's just conjecture, and I'd be speaking from a position of hindsight, anyway.

I wrote about guns a while ago here. I think anybody who says, "If only [insert speaker's position on gun control] were the law, then this wouldn't have happened" is wrong. Or at the very least, any law in one direction is going to have tradeoffs in some other direction. Not to say I'm a nihilist - I'm not - but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking any solution we come up with will be all-powerful to stop violence.

This is also probably a mental health issue, too, but, again, musing on that would also be a matter of conjecture.

NOTE: I've been tweaking the wording of this post here and there.