More on Evil

The Sun Times of Chicago echoes my last post about how the presence of evil in man is to blame for the massacre at Virginia Tech and the debate that will begin about allowing students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus.

In 2002, according to a report on CNSNews.com, a disgruntled student at the Appalachian Law School, Peter Odighizuwa, allegedly shot and killed the school's dean, a professor, and a student on campus. He was subdued, CNSNews.comreported, only when two students reportedly ran to their cars to fetch their own guns and returned to confront the killer, who surrendered.

This led the president of the Second Amendment group at another school, George Mason University, to start looking into reforming bans on weapons on campus. That issue, already alive on campuses across the country, will grow only larger in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. It will be an important debate. We don't believe any public policy will be able to expunge from society the kind of insanity or evil that leads to the kinds of acts witnessed yesterday. But we do believe that Americans have the capacity to reason out their own choices about how to defend themselves. And to reach out in their thoughts and prayers to the families who lost loved ones on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech continued

I spent a lot of time in the car yesterday, so all of the info about the shooting that I received during the day came from the local AM news station. They played a lot of interviews of students and teachers, both from Virginia Tech and Southern Cal (the local reaction). I remember hearing one female student say that there had to be mental illness involved. Sadly, this has become the normal reaction to senseless events like this. Either there was something wrong with the perpetrator's brain or that person (or group in the case of Islamists) has been so mistreated by family, peers, society, or the United States, that it's no wonder that they did what they did. How can we blame them? I don't remember hearing one mention of the word "evil" during all of yesterday's coverage. That's because in our secular society, we've been taught that man is basically good inside. If one of us loses it and guns down dozens of people around us, it must be the fault of said gunned-down people. Let's study the shooter and figure out what kind of victim he was. To think of it in any other way means that we have to admit that the shooter was wrong in his action. Which means that there is a right and wrong. Which means that there is a standard for us. Which means we are responsible for our actions. No, that can't be right.

Shooting at Virginia Tech

The worst campus shooting in U.S. history occurred today at Virginia Tech University, apparently by a lone individual. Here's the latest. How long do you think before the gun-control freaks start to use this event as more evidence of the need for ridding the population of all firearms? If anything, this incident makes a good argument for allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons. These students that died today were sitting ducks.