Senseless

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims and all of the Virginia Tech community after yesterday's tragedy.

What compels a person to such an act? To take the lives of innocent people? So many innocent people... I feel physically sick to think of it: pure evil.

There will be plenty of analysis in the aftermath. Some parents are already calling for the school's president to resign, some students were angry they weren't given more warning after the first shooting - hindsight is always 20/20. It's like people who want to blame anyone but the terrorists for what happened on 9/11 - the killer is who we should be focusing blame upon.

But how and why does a killer become a killer?? The Euro press is trying to blame it on Charlton Heston and the NRA. I'm all for the second amendment and perserving our right to bear arms, but they have a point - not sure that criteria for certain types of automatic weapons doesn't need to be re-thought. On the other hand... my late great uncle had an arsenol of guns in his Detroit home. A closet full of rifles (he was a hunter), plus handguns placed in strategic drawers or cupboards in almost every room of the house. Those were strictly for defense purposes - there were 3 crack houses on his street, a brothel next door (that eventually burned down), they had been robbed twice, and drive-by shootings were commonplace. Criminals will continue to find weapons and good Americans should have the right to defend themselves. Guns don't kill people on their own; someone has to pull the trigger.

My humble opinion is that it's the increased acceptance of extreme violence that contributes to this problem - for giving all of these freaks ideas. (Anyone ever played Halo?? Just one example of a video game where the point is nothing more than to kill each other) Movies have become more violent, etc. I've never been one of those to blame the entertainment industry for the actions of individual people, but I can't help but think this culture of violence is having an effect.

More so than gun control or entertainment, though, you have to come back to the disintegration of the American traditional family.

I'm not saying it's one of these three factors or that any play into this tragic case at Virginia Tech. But you have easy access to semi-automatic weapons + culture of violence + no family support/moral compass and we're going to continue to see incidents like this.

Again, our prayers go out to those at Viriginia Tech. I hope in the aftermath we can learn valuable lessons from this, without thinking we have to compromise our fundamental American character.