My first thoughts are of sorrow for the students and families most directly affected by this horrible act. Most decent people would pause out of respect for the families.

Unfortunately, across the world many in the press couldn’t wait to start blaming America first for the act of one sick person. Here and here are some roundups of the international reactions to the shootings. There have been many paragraphs written about it, but it can all be summed up as “The Americans Had It Coming.” Reading the articles, it is depressing to see the perpetuation of the bigoted stereotype of the American as a foul, brash cowboy shooting up the saloon.

The communist controlled state media in China was particularly enthusiastic about the virtues of a disarmed populace. Do I really need to spell out why?

The Virginia Tech campus had been declared off limits to all guns. The end result of this was that all law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits were disarmed when on that campus. The politically correct term for this is a “Gun Free Zone”. Perhaps a more accurate term would be a “Defense Free Zone”. Or maybe just a “Killing Field”. You read the heart-rending stories of some of the survivors and a common theme is the terror of realizing that they were utterly defenseless, and could do nothing but wait for their turn to be killed.

As misguided gun control advocates try to exploit this tragedy as an excuse to further disarm law abiding citizens and render them defenseless like the students and faculty at Virginia Tech were, we should remember something that Ronald Reagan said.

It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun control laws. I happen to know this from personal experience.