Studies in Scarlet

So we have 32 dead from the rampage at Virginia Tech State University yesterday. Blaming the University for lax security is bullsh*t. As the University's President said, the school had no reasonable cause to expect a second shooting two hours after the first one. Lets say the school had sent a couple of campus security officers out with a bullhorn to warn all on campus that the gunman from the earlier shooting had not been apprehended yet. What would have happened? Widespread panic? Stampede? Very likely. Either way, the University was looking at problems regarding its approach to security.

If we accept that violence is always going to be around (maybe not with the frequency that sh*t happens in the middle east) then the solution becomes simpler. Therefore, lets look at such an event from another angle. How many students had become nervous after the gunman had peeked into their classroom twice earlier? You might first want to read my post Your body is your church below...Welcome back. Now what could the students have done when the gunman arrived? How many attempted to hide behind chairs instead of picking one up and hauling it at the gunman? On a side note, how many students can actually pick a chair up without dislocating a shoulder? Did a student even attempt to throw a heavy book at the gunman to perhaps distract him or hurt him enough for other students to jump him? Perhaps prevention of such tragedies lies in what one could have done for oneself. I am not saying that no deaths would have occurred if the students's had had a strong sense of awareness of their surroundings. But I am saying that it was possible to have reacted in such a way that the death toll would have ended up being a fraction of what it turned out to be.