Tragedy At Virginia Tech - At Least 32 Students Dead After Rampage

Related :
Officials: Gunman dead after bloody campus rampage
Gunman kills 32 in Virginia Tech rampage

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their friends and family in this time of grief.

UPDATE :

Turns out there were various warning signs that should have sounded alarm bells with the University. The shooter, now identified had raised concerns of a teacher over a year ago with disturbing writing. Furthermore there was an incident with a dorm room fire and increasingly erratic behavior, including stalking young woman and a brief stint in a mental hospital.

Still, he was able to get not one, but two handguns. Nice. Immigrants who have been in mental hospitals can get guns now. Wow, that's ... smart gun control laws for you.

It also looks like the authorities handled the situation in the worst possible way. The first shooting occurred at the Ambler Johnson Dorm where it appears only two people where killed. Authorities only locked down the single building opposed to the entire campus.

This allowed the shooter to go back to his own dorm, reload, write a note and resume his rampage a full two hours later. Over 30 lives could have been saved if authorities had been quicker on the ball.

Furthermore the failure to act proves the security for our nations universities is lax to a point of nonexistence.

What if the rampage had been organized by a group of terrorist opposed to a lone gunmen? The authorities did not even have control of the situation with only one loose gunmen, how would they have handled it if it had been a dozen extremist? Even worse.

LINKS :

- Gunman had stalked two female students
- World Reacts to Tech Shootings
- Quiet loner's writing dwelled on violence