The New York Times editorial page says the massacre at Virginia Tech shows the need for “stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.” The Washington Post editorial page says the incident poses many questions, including one that suggests that the Times has it backward: “Would the university have suffered the same tragedy if Virginia law did not prohibit the carrying of guns on campus?” The Los Angeles Times editorial page thinks everyone “should remember that there are times when silence is the best response.” (Though the L.A. Times editorial also adds, “No newspaper is in a position to criticize anybody for capitalizing on tragedy or taking convenient positions.”)
At the group legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, applauds those who treat tragedies as teachable moments: “Using the attention created by a tragedy to try to prevent similar tragedies strikes me as in principle an eminently proper response, a way to allow at least some good to come from the evil.”
Tufts political scientist Daniel Drezner is also sympathetic. He writes on his personal blog: “On the one hand there are first-mover advantages to framing an event in a way that privileges your preferred policies. The conundrum, of course, is that on the other hand, articulating such a frame before the facts are clear carries extraordinary risks of a) creating a backlash by pouring salt on a public wound; b) being labeled as opportunistic, and c) looking foolish as the facts become clearer.”
James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern, suggests on the op-ed page of The Los Angeles Times that spree killings are going to happen, whether there are more guns, fewer guns or the same amount of guns in our society: “These days, we know an awful lot about why these events occur. We’re beginning to understand the motivations behind events that, to many people, seem senseless. But that doesn’t mean we can prevent them. We’re not going to build fortresses out of our college campuses, nor should we.”
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