thoughts and prayers

I didn't intend to talk about the massacre at Virginia Tech on this blog, but then I turned on my DVR to watch tonight's game and found that David Wright's little brother is a student at VT, and the Nationals all wore VT hats tonight, which gives me an opening.

I worked for campus security in college, and I'm absolutely certain that there is nothing the security staff of my little school would have been able to do to shut down the campus should something similar have occurred there, and so I have a hard time faulting the school for not preventing the second spree. However, I have no problem faulting a society that makes it so easy for a disturbed young man to obtain an automatic firearm. Could someone have done something to keep this tragedy from happening? I don't know, once the guy had a gun. But without a gun, one thing is sure-- he would not have been able to do such damage in such a short period of time.

David spoke eloquently about his fear in the minutes between when he heard about the shootings and when he was able to reach his mother and heard that she had already spoken to his brother, who was safe. I admit that my thoughts have turned many times today to my sister, going off to college in just a little more than a year, and how awful it would be to spend even five minutes not knowing whether your sibling had been hurt or worse in such a horrible way. The very thought of losing my baby sister so tragically is paralyzing. I can only imagine what the families of the victims are going through.

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who has been touched by this madness, and at the same time I cannot forget that this kind of carnage happens every day in Iraq.