There is a scary truth behind Virginia Tech murders

The initial reaction to the murder of 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech was a mixture of shock and anger and allegations that officials may have been able to do something to stop the killer.
Second-guessing is easy enough, but inappropriate at a time when all the victims hadn't even been identified.
Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 innocent people before he turned one of his guns on himself. It doesn't take knowing more than that to assign responsibility.
Why he killed and in the manner he did -- first two people at a dormitory and then 30 in a classroom building -- will take a long time to reconstruct. Ultimately, the only one who could have known to a certainty was Cho, and given the demons that were driving him, he may not have been able to say.
A need to place blame
Grieving students and parents want to be able to say something else should have been done because, of course, nothing more can be done to punish Cho. Society is eager to assign blame because then it becomes easier for all of us to tell ourselves that whatever was broken can be fixed.
We want to believe that this can't happen again -- until it happens again.
The loss to the university, to Virginia and to the nation is impossible to quantify. The 32 people murdered Monday individually and collectively represented impressive past accomplishments and enormous potential. They were scientists, engineers and linguists of the present and the future. Their lives were snuffed out in a few hours of selfish indulgence by a man who blamed others for his own shortcomings.
When we send our children away to work or live or study in another place, we want to believe they will be safe. But the sad and scary truth is that there are no guarantees. No place -- not even a school or university -- exists in a bubble. There is nowhere our loved ones can go where they will meet only perfectly safe people.
There will be investigations, not only of Cho and his motivations, but of the university's response after the first two murders were discovered. The first and most prominent accusation was that the university should have been shut down immediately. That is easier said than done, given that the campus if roughly the size of Hubbard or Canfield.
Campus police had reason to view those first murders as domestic in nature, and unless a subsequent investigation shows that there was at least some reason to think otherwise, it is difficult to imagine why those killings would have resulted in a lockdown or cancellation of classes.
Of course, for the foreseeable future, look for college presidents to react -- indeed, overreact -- to almost any sign of violence.
Looking for normal
"On this terrible day of mourning, it's hard to imagine a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal, but such a day will come," President Bush said at Tuesday's assembly of students and faculty.
And he was right.
But know this: When that day of normalcy arrives, there will still be no guarantees of safety. Because while violence is not normal, in an open society the possibility of something going wrong -- even horribly, terribly, tragically wrong -- is normal.