A Killer in Blacksburg

Virginia Tech's tragedy is America's, too.

EVEN IN a nation numb to violence and inured to recurrent school shootings, the scale of the human tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday was heartbreaking. The nation watched, transfixed and horrified, as grainy cellphone images and video footage from Blacksburg conveyed a sense of the carnage and mayhem at a university seized in the blink of an eye by terror. And the nation grieved, once again, as young lives brimming with promise and possibility were cut short by that now familiar campus scourge: an aggrieved gunman, or gunmen, on a rampage.

Students and commentators dubbed it "the college Columbine," recalling two teenagers' killing of 12 students at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999. In fact, the toll at Virginia Tech yesterday was statistically worse -- at least 33 dead and more than 30 injured, the deadliest mass shooting of civilians in American history. And the details, as they emerged in early, unconfirmed reports, were unspeakable: students lined up and shot in a classroom; students leaping from the windows of buildings to save themselves; a gunman unidentified for hours because his head wounds were so severe.

The atrocity at Virginia Tech sparked instant and fierce debates, online and elsewhere, even as survivors were fighting for their lives. Under what circumstances, and where, did the gunman obtain his weapons? Would the university have suffered the same tragedy if Virginia law did not prohibit the carrying of guns on campus? Should metal detectors be ubiquitous in American classrooms and dormitories? And why are gunmen so apt to carry out their lethal rampages at American schools?

More particularly, what more, if anything, could the authorities at Virginia Tech have done to prevent yesterday's carnage? Were possible warning signs, such as bomb threats in the weeks before the incident, adequately investigated? And between the first shootings around 7 a.m., when two people were killed in a dormitory, and the second ones two hours later, when 31 died at a classroom building, did the city and campus police take all possible steps to lock down the university and scour it for the shooter? On a sprawling campus of 2,600 acres and almost 22,000 students, given imperfect communications, is it even feasible to lock every door and bolt every window on short notice?

As the debates rage and questions are raised, the mourning will go on. But the parents, relatives and friends of the victims at Virginia Tech will not mourn alone. Their tragedy is America's too.