I have been upset all day, hearing report after report from Virginia Tech. I had to call both my kids, just to hear them tell me they were okay. (Neither of them goes there, but.) Even if they lived at home and went to U of L, who's to stop some maniac from going onto that campus? I'd like to bring them both home and keep them locked in their rooms for the rest of my natural life.

Take comfort Jackie from What we still have

kua wairangi te hinengaro
he ataahua tonu te whenua

When the mind is misery
The land is still beautiful

I empathise.

32 murders of course tragic but three times that number are slaughtered in Iraq every day

This event has special significance for me: both my kids are away at college. One is a hundred miles away, the other, 600.

Thanks, olly--we do indeed have beautiful land.

Hadn't seen the news for two days. Saw just now.My sympathy, although that will bring no one back to friends and families and i will never understand such things. And can only be sad about it.

It's terrifying. You send your kids off to school and think they're safe. My kids think I'm a weirdo, but I never let them out of the house without telling them, "Don't forget Daddy loves you."

But with this event there is not such a distinction where it occurred that it could not have been somewhere else. Such a place having a separate police force could affect the outcome [not trying to cast blame] but the same sort of tragedy could happen almost anywhere, and has.

I know how you feel: back in 2001, my son left for college on September 13, 2 days after the plane crashes in New York and Washington. Life went on, but our need for connection and caring was sharply defined.

I am horrified by the rash of suicide/murders that have occurred over the past year. There were the shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania; then the terrible events that happened barely two months ago at Trolley Square, right here in Salt Lake City. Now, we hear about Virginia Tech. I know we cannot live our everyday lives in fear of the occasional lunatic with a gun. However, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent either.
The repeated examples of killings, and suicide, both in the USA and in Iraq, are disturbing indeed.

Ah yes, pennyless. Do you have a point?

Sometimes the point is to express what you feel.

Thank you Olly, when there is horror we need beauty more than ever.

Put that in the backdrop of the sheer number of homicides annually in this country(15,000), and what you really have is a consolidation of homicides. Statistical, yes, but true, no?

My point is that I feel it is important to remain emotionally open and compassionate, in the face of unfortunate events. It is also important to avoid the indifference, paranoia, bathos or cynicism that so many people react with.

Well, I know the VA Tech campus well since my brother-in-law was a student there when he was engaged to my sister. Went there often, so it really brings it home.

Innocents dying everywhere...all this senseless killing...no answers, it seems? Pathetic, devasting...numbing.

There are a lot of snotty comments like that on BBC. What is your point exactly? Are you assuming that people who take some time to reflect or comment upon the Virgina Tech episode have no clue about Iraq? That we need lecturing on the subject? One of the horrors of the Iraq war is that, unfortunately, the daily bombings and other killings there are no longer "news" anymore. One takes note of it but there's not much to be said IMO. I don't see how having some compassion for the VT community or expressing shock over it indicates that someone is not paying due attention to what's going on in Iraq.

/rant

Anyway, one of the students killed was the granddaughter of one of my favorite elementary school teachers in Kentucky. I can't begin to imagine the grief that the all families are going through.

I'll be generous to Dale here in assuming his intent...

In the media frenzy, we get caught up in caring for the families of these 32 people, and (as others have posted above) about our own families being affected by a school or other random shooting and whether our gun laws are good enough. Meanwhile, on that same day in the US statistically, roughly 1100 people were killed in/by automobiles, 150 women died of breast cancer, ... from all causes between 6 and 7,000 people in the US die every day.

Can we care a little about those families, too? What about the other ways your family members are more likely to die (e.g. driving)? What about the 1000's of other things that could have their safety improved or be better regulated?

Ok, now I'm ranting... Sorry!

I think you may have added a zero to your daily death toll for auto accidents in the US. Two years ago there were 43,000 plus for the year. About 115 to 120 a day.

And this is to Dale: Dammit, man. You know why we eschew politics here. It leads to far more strife than we need on this board. LAY THE HELL OFF! If you can't lay off, get off.

Oh Dale was just TEASING. you know how much he likes to tease. Its fun it is to tease.

Dale just wanted tto add salt to the wound--what fun is it to see someone stabbed in the back with out rubbing in a little salt?

i mean, a little salt is just teasing right? No harm.. just some teasing. Yeah, that it.

thanks,
ff