Virginia Tech

There's not much to say about the tragic events at Virginia Tech that hasn't been written and debated a thousand times already on 24 hours news. Andrew Cohen's Bench Conference sums it up:

But I learned two fascinating things Monday afternoon in the immediate wake of the killing spree. First, I learned from two gun control advocates, including Jim Hennigan at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, that gun control in this country and specifically on our nation's campuses has not gotten measurably better in the eight years since Columbine. In many cases, these advocates say, it's gotten worse. Second, I learned from CBS News' Armen Keteyian that school administrators and college officials at Virginia Tech had in fact implemented reasonable security measures (against the wishes of state legislators) designed to limit guns on campus. In other words, even though the university was relatively proactive in confronting the problem of guns on campus, the brutal slayings occurred anyway.

There is an interesting exchange in the comments section between 'Bukko in Australia', an ex-pat American now living and working in Melbourne and a couple of people with a dissenting view.

I'm with 'Bukko', Melbourne is a safe place to live. Yes, it's not crime-free, but you can walk the streets without fear and gun crime is pretty limited. I wasn't here at the time of the Port Arthur Massacre but gun control implemented afterwards has made it difficult to obtain firearms to the point of making competition shooting difficult.