Virginia Tech shooting

Interestingly enough, two days later and my youth group kids hadn't even heard the news. Some thoughts and questions:

1. I suppose its only natural that something like this makes the headlines because it's on home soil, but this is a daily occurence in other parts of the world (like Iraq), and it doesn't raise much interest. Is that ok?

2. Did you see the "convocation?" They had Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews represented among the speakers. It was interesting to hear them back to back--all offering words of hope and encouragement, all lamenting the tragedy. If I were a normal person and could be objective, I would love to rank the speakers to see which was the most encouraging.

3. A South Korean killer? I don't know if I've ever heard of a non-American comitting this type of a personally motivated crime in the US. All the others are disgruntled and angry, maybe psycotic American fringe types. But then again, how foreign was he? He'd lived in the US for 14 years, and he was only 23.

4. How do you think the media coverage has been? It seemed, at least from internet news sources, that the media was determined to doubt the administration's wisdom in the handling of the situation from the getgo. Why?

5. And my final comment. Why do these tragedy's always raise the "how could it have been prevented" question? That question is dangerous precisely because you cannot prevent individuals from harming others in such a fashion. I mean, come on, if someone is determined to kill himself and wants to take 30 others along with him, is there really anything anybody can do about it? The amount of freedoms you'd have to eliminate in order to create a perfectly safe society would be colossal. Not the society I want to live in.