Good post Gary. I agree that the students who bullied him when he was younger, and possibly those who made fun of him at VT, should be looking hard at their role in this. Civility is indeed somehting we don't emphasize enough in school curriculum.

Just some facts about guns and violence and why arming students is NOT the solution!

1. Experiments show that just the prsence of a gun in the room makes people behave more aggressively. Guns prime aggressive thoughts. Agressive thoughts are more likely to lead to aggressive actions.

2. Alcohol makes people more agressive. And, depsite everything everybody does to prevent it, alcohol abuse is common in college.

3. Young males of college age are statistically the most likely to behave agressively against someone else.

4. Research shows that gun owners who have not been trained to use their guns in a combat situation are unlikely to be able to successfully wound a gunman, but misfire to such a great degree that they have some good chance of hitting someone else in a chaotic situation.

I am not overall anti-gun. I have no problem with responsible gun ownership for the purposess of hunting (but I don't think we need semi-automatics for that). I just think there need to be a lot more safety checks about who can buy one and we should NOT be talking about arming students because of this. That would only lead to more senseless student deaths.

I also have some pretty strong opinions about how hindsight is 20-20 here in terms of looking for someone to blame. We as cancer survisvors should know that sometimes senseless tragic things happen and there's not really anyone to blame.

OK. I'm done. I also think about this every time I go into work. Almost all our classrooms are on a high second floor--not realy a place where jumping out windows would work if a gunman came in. To say nothing of the fact that the windows don't open! Statistically, I'd guess this sort of thing would have more of a chance of happening at a community college since we are the college of second chances and seem to have way more students on psychiatric meds than the 4 year school where I used to teach (I know this because I teach psychology and in intro. psych when we get to teaching about neurotransmitters and medications I often have classes where students ask me about their medications!)

Nelie