A few hours ago, a man bearing a gun entered an engineering building in Virginia Tech and shot 30 people (students and professors) to death. Just like that. Then he shot himself. What does one do when something like this happens? What does one think?
Do you think of grieving families? Or about what went on in minds of the students who were about to be shot? Or do you wonder what caused the desperation and dementia that drove the gunman to homicide? Or do you ask why it should be so easy for a young man to procure a gun and enough ammunition to kill 33 people and injure 15 others?
I don’t know. For the most part, I feel thoroughly wretched. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Mirkwood 
I think one feels that (1) there are people who are on the edge of some kind of violence everywhere in the world because of mental illness, or trauma in their pasts, and (2) the United States is a place in which, for a variety of reasons, the violence in such people erupts in this particular deeply painful and tragic form with some regularity. The reasons for and solutions to both deserve our attention, not just after this sort of thing happens, but all the time.
I’m always stunned into disbelief when something like this happens. How could this happen. I can’t imagine anything in life being so bad that I could ever do such a thing–probably what most people feel. I feel terrible for the families. I actually feel sort of bad for the person who did this–what happened to them and their life that they could fall into such a chasm that they could do such a thing. Did we as a society fail these people somehow, as things like this seem to happen more often (seems anyway) here than any other place.
I was horribly shocked when I heard about it, and yet it does seem to follow a terrible pattern that’s been set up at the moment. I do wonder how anyone can get hold of that kind of ammunition – you couldn’t do it over here, but Bloglily is also right. There are people on the edge all over the world, and if they are determined, they’ll find a way to cause mayhem. I do feel absolutely awful for the families involved.
What does one do when something like this happens? What does one think?
I think three things:
1 – calamities that get the frontpages and headlines are not necessarily the worst ones. So many more people are dying in Darfur every day right now.
2 – I do not need to make myself miserable for a thing that happens on the other side of the world just because it is exceptionally gruesome, and I am glad I do not have a TV anymore
3 – I save a prayer for the wounded and the families and friends of the dead, and for everybody else whose misery and nightmare has not been reported.
And another thing: in these situations, we often think of the families of victims, but the worse off might be the family of the gunman.