From A Distance, Tragedy and Loss
Submitted by Jim Wogan on April 18, 2007 - 3:24am.
The tragedy at Virginia Tech has touched the entire nation. During times like this, everyone wants to make a connection. People want to help-- even if it's not entirely possible.
Tennessee is our home, but we are visiting my wife's family in Syracuse, New York. Blacksburg, Knoxville, and Syracuse share a common thread. All three are college towns. Syracuse was touched by tragedy twenty years ago when the community lost 35 students to a terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103.
While the national networks have provided excellent coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy-- and done a good job of answering many questions-- local stations like the ones here in Syracuse, and WATE-TV, provide a view the networks can't. It's the common spirit college towns share. It's the students and families from our communities that have lived the nightmare. It's the memorial services our communities have held for the Virginia Tech victims.
I was also shocked Tuesday to hear of the death of longtime Knoxville high school football coach Bill Wilson. I spoke with Bill just last week. His return to high school football last season was one of the big stories of the year. In just one season, Wilson had Bearden turned back in the right direction. He will be missed. My thoughts go out to his family.
My thoughts and prayers go
My thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims in this horrible tragedy. I have heard so many people comment on blamming the school, the police and now the doctors. The only person to blame is the guy who did the shooting. I would like to say our prayers go out to the police officers who was working at the school that day. They were the only ones going into danger to try and save a life. everyone else was running away from it. Being a police officer myself I know that if they could have prevented this they would have. so lets try saying thank you for there efforts and quit trying to place blame. hind site is always 20/20. do you know how many people are walking around right now who are a risk to do harm to themselves or others? you would be amazed. there are probably teachers in our schools who have some sort of mental disorder. it is always a tragedy that makes people take notice of our own safty. No matter how much you plan and try to keep people safe all it takes is 1 person to bring the security under fire.
as for gun control, if some of the students in those classrooms had a gun themselves they could have prevented a lot of deaths themselves. Trying to keep guns out of the public will only leave good people unable to defend themselves. killers and robbers dont care if there is a gun ban. they will have there guns but honest people will be helpless.
and last I want to say that i am proud to live in tennessee and to see our students and community come together for the victims of this tragedy.
The Tragedy on the campus at
The Tragedy on the campus at VA Tech was harder for me to watch then the 911 attach because we may not have expected to be attached as we were on 911 but we all knew that these people were capable of that kind of violence. That is what terrorist do. We don't expect that a young man on a college campus even in this day and age to walk through our students college class door and start shooting. In my mind and I'm sure others as well, we just need to know why, not so much how, but why and clearly we will never know. I was home when the news broke on our local news but I just couldn't believe it. And now in the aftermath of this insanity people are talking about gun control. I wish there was a way to control guns, but in reality there isn't, I mean gun control doesn't keep guns out of the hands of people determined to kill someone or do the very thing this young man did on the VA Tech Campus. The reality is that this guy was determined and if he hadn't been able to get a gun from that gun store he would have found other means of getting it. Guns are stolen and sold illegally all the time and then used to kill people. I want the VA Tech community to know my heart goes out to everyone, parents, kids,teachers,students, everyone, my prayers are with you.
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