Virginia Tech

What can be said about the shootings at Virginia Tech that hasn't already been said by the media and blogs over the last 24 hours. A good write up is by Dean Barnett

Nothing.

One comment I will make about the criticism about the police and university administrators for not locking down the campus after the first shootings, which took place about 20-30 minutes before the second group (where most of the students were killed).

(from news conference with the police department on NBC news on 4/16/07, 8:30pm PDT)
Virginia Tech is a commuter school, so the majority of the students drive to class from off campus and with classes starting at 8am, a lot of students were in their cars heading in towards school. There wasn't anyway to warn the students who were on their way in there was trouble on campus.

Even on campus, I don't know but am willing to guess there isn't a PA system that covers the entire school. I've attended 2 universities and two community colleges and none of them had a campus wide PA system so how to alert the entire school is a question.

Could the police have done more? Possibly. Could the administration done more? Possibly.

How can we prevent this in the future? I only see two options.
1. Turn the campus into a supermax prison which controls the movement of each student.
2. Allow students to carry their firearms to campus if they have a concealed weapons permit.

The first option isn't going to happen. The second is opposed by most college administrators.