Spree Killing At Its Finest

If you've been living off the planet for the past 12 hours, you might have missed the news that there was a shooting spree at Virginia Tech University that left 33 dead and another 26 injured. The shooting finally stopped when the gunman, trapped inside by police, killed himself. Even though the deathtoll may possibly rise, if those injured die later, it already stands as the worst shooting spree in U.S. history.

The only question I have about this whole thing (other than "How do you do all that with a couple of handguns?") is: How does a guy shoot two people, disappear for two hours, and then reappear elsewhere on campus to shoot nearly 60 more? It's not as though the guy shot the first two, and then took a leisurely drive to Roanoke to resume his spree; he shot the two, and then spent the next two hours going a couple hundred yards across campus (peep this map to get an idea of the distance), with police looking for him the whole time. (This impressive bit of policing reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Willy and Santa's Little Helper gets stuck in the ventilation duct, and when Chief Wiggum arrives to find his men shooting hoops, his response is, "That's some nice work, boys." Just about the same deal in here.) And what's up with notifying everyone of the first shooting via a school-wide e-mail? 'Cuz that's the best way to let everyone know a killer's on the loose.

All the fuckups aside, this incident does seem to bear some interesting poisonous fruit. Mark my words: When the '08 presidential candidates begin campaigning, the number one item on their agenda is going to be gun control reform, seeing as how the Brady Bill and the Assault Rifle Ban both went the way of the dodo before all of this happened. I think it will be an especially hot talking point in the state elections in Virginia, which has some seriously lax gun laws (no licensing, the ability to purchase multiple firearms, and a NICS-type background check).

We'll see how it all plays out in the coming days; we'll get firearms banned out of this country yet.