Today's Tragedy in Blacksburg

Please indulge me as I vent and ramble for a few moments on the topic of today's unbelievable tragedy...

Working at a university and living in Virginia, I am literally overcome by the shootings at Virginia Tech today. Working in communications, I've also found myself getting angry at people who are criticzing VA Tech administration for not communicating earlier. First of all, hindsight is 20/20, and secondly, I can't believe that getting out bad information quickly is better than getting it right. However, on the flip side, a friend of my mom's called her this evening close to tears... He works at the Pentagon and didn't learn of the shooting until he was listening to his car radio on his way home. He works with an afterschool drama program and knows a lot of high school kids who have matriculated at Virginia Tech. This made me think of all the parents who may not have heard the news until late in the day - over 25% of VA Tech students are from northern Virginia.

I had a conversation earlier with our university spokesperson and asked her for her thoughts on what was happening. She said, of course, that she was so grateful it hadn't happened at Georgetown. She could only imagine what it would be like to be having those heart breaking conversations with families of the people who had been killed. Even worse, she thought, would be informing the parents of the young man (we're assuming he's student) who shot and killed those people before shooting himself.

I know that Minnesota is all red-state now (what is that about???) but I heard tonight that in Virginia one of the biggest restrictions on purchasing firearms is that you can only buy one per month. God help us.