Virginia Tech, you are in our prayers

I don't plan to make a habit of going off-topic with my blog entries. But sometimes an event so incomprehensible occurs, it just can't be ignored.

As most of you know, someone went on a rampage this morning on the Virgina Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. The gunman first killed two people at a women's dormitory around 7:15 AM. The campus police believed it was a case of domestic violence and did not think the gunman was still on campus. They would be proven wrong a little over two hours later when the same gunman killed 30 more students at a classroom hall across campus before turning the gun on himself.

In all, 33 people (including the gunman) were killed. Reports vary on the number injured, but it is somewhere between 12 and 24.

Today's tragedy will go down in history as the worst case of mass shooting in the nation. It eclipses the 1991 rampage at a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a gunman rammed his truck through the front window of the restaurant before opening fire on the customers. 23 people were killed that day. It also eclipses the 1966 University of Texas tower killings, which had been the deadliest campus mass shooting prior to today. In the UT case, a lone gunman went to the top of the school's clock tower and, while extremely hidden and protected, picked off 13 people during his 96 minutes shooting spree. He had stabbed his wife and mother to death before going to the campus.

The news has been covering today's events at Virginia Tech almost non-stop since this morning. Already, people are circling the wagons. Some are crying for more gun control, while others are crying for more rights to carry concealed weapons. News pundits are already throwing blame at the university, saying they should have locked down the campus after the first shooting. At this point, we don't even know who the gunman is or why he did what he did.

Today is not the day for any of that. It will all sort itself out over the days to come. Instead, today is the day to left up the victims of this tragedy, and the school as a whole, in your prayers. Today is the first day of the rest of their lives. And they will need all the support they can get.

Virgina Tech, you are all in my thoughts and prayers.


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# posted by Alan @ 5:11 PM                                        Post a Comment