Gunman Kills 32 at Virginia Tech

You've heard about this and there's little I can say. Except that I knew with sickening certainty that it was only a matter of time before someone started trying to make political hay out of it. I was almost as certain I knew what sort of people it would be.

And here you can read about them saying if only more people had handguns, things like this just wouldn't happen.

And from the Earthlink News story:

A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Y'know...I don't know who was expecting that people like President Bush would change their position on the right-to-carry. That's not what struck me as offensive about that statement and the ones linked above.

It's that...shouldn't this be a time for tending to the wounded, both physically and psychically; the mourning of the dead? Before we rush ass-over-teakettle to "prove" that it supports our already deeply-held belief, shouldn't we wait until we can try to find out exactly what happened here, what went wrong?

Shouldn't we be thinking about the victims, the survivors, and possible heroes? Possible heroes like the one in this story:

Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior, said he was in a 9:05 a.m. mechanics class when he and classmates heard a thunderous sound from the classroom next door - "what sounded like an enormous hammer."

Screams followed an instant later, and the banging contined. When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks for hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.

"I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed in a bush and ran.

Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at the professor, who had stayed behind, perhaps to block the door.

The instructor was killed, he said.

Emphasis mine. Surely we should be thinking about this, and not trying to score petty points, at this time.