Turns Out They Might Have Done a Bit Better After All

Despite that Virginia Tech’s internal investigation gave Virginia Tech an “A” grade for performance in regard to that animal shooting up the school, a different panel says otherwise:

RICHMOND, Va. —  Virginia Tech officials may have been able to save lives if the campus warning system had been implemented more quickly, a panel said in a report issued Thursday.

But the panel also found that the failure of the state’s mental health system and the school’s lack of information about the shooter’s mental health also played a role.

“The dots were not connected, the signals were missed at Virginia Tech,” said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine at a press conference Thursday.

It took administrators more than two hours to get out an e-mail warning students and staff to be cautious. The shooter had time to leave the dormitory where the first two victims were killed, mail a letter, and then enter a classroom building, chain the doors shut and kill 31 more people, including himself.

Read it all to get the whole story.  My contention is this: if you’re going to declare a place a “gun-free zone,” and thereby not allow the people in it to carry the tools to defend themselves, then you have taken upon yourself the sole and total responsibility of protecting those people.  Which means that if you fall down on that responsibility and people get killed, I’d say the deaths are pretty much on your head.