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~~snipett~~
It was nothing less than a morning of sheer terror.
If you asked any student on the quiet campus of Virginia Tech on the morning of April 16, 2007, most would have told you they felt safe. As they gathered their backpacks, pencils and textbooks and prepared to go about their day, no one imagined the sleepy town of Blacksburg, Va., would be the stage for the worst college shooting in U.S. history.
One of the students feeling particularly safe that morning was a mentally disturbed youth—he would want his name to be printed here, but we won't—whose plans differed radically from those of his classmates. Instead of textbooks and calculators, his plan involved two handguns and 400 rounds of ammunition.
Despite his psychological problems, he showed deliberate and calculated strategy in selecting his target. There's no doubt he felt safe planning and carrying out his attack, since just the previous year Virginia Tech officials "heroically" defeated a bill allowing lawful concealed carry on campus. The officials were jubilant at their victory, certain that the bill's defeat would help students "feel safe." They realized too late that feeling safe and being safe were two different things—the bill's failure guaranteed that no one was capable of resisting an armed killer.
Walking into a dormitory, the shooter began by gunning down two students. It took two hours before officials alerted students to the murders. During that interval, police arrived and began investigating, the killer mailed videotaped rants and a manifesto to NBC and Virginia Tech officials privately warned their own families and secured their own offices. What school officials didn't do, however, was warn students that their safety that morning might be in jeopardy, as required by federal law. A review by the U.S. Department of Education released in May found that Virginia Tech failed to take prompt action in warning the campus community of the possibility of danger after the bodies of the two students were found, in accordance with a mandate called the Clery Act.
More than two hours later, with police still on campus, the perpetrator entered Norris Hall and began murdering more students. One survivor later stated that the total randomness of the killing was still hard to get over; without the ability to resist, the choice of life or death rested solely in the hands of a mentally deranged killer. Eventually, realizing armed officers were approaching, he took one final life—his own.
In nine minutes he fired 174 shots, killed 32 people and wounded 15—traumatizing a whole campus and leaving an entire nation to grieve. Although the massacre was devastating, it could have been far worse: The killer missed with 73 percent of his shots, and he had more than 200 rounds remaining.
The Virginia Tech story is familiar to anyone who followed the news in 2007. Killing sprees aren't new, but it was the first time in decades that a college campus was hit, or that so many died.
What is less well known is that there have been more than a dozen other college shootings since
Virginia Tech. You probably didn't hear about most of them because there wasn't enough blood to earn a cover story, but each of these attacks had one thing in common. They all occurred under the same banner: "gun-free zone."