Virginia Tech, presumably like most American universities, prohibits guns on campus. Did this help the gunman achieve such a hideous body count? Did he count on this as he planned his mission, and later coolly implemented it?
From what I’ve been reading today, it would appear that the shooter only planned minimally. Certainly he was well armed — two guns, at least one of which was 9mm, and lots of extra ammunition — and he knew the dorm where his first target lived (although some reports say that she was not there, so he just shot her roommate and a residential advisor responding to the commotion). He later went to a classroom building where she was likely to be present, but he didn’t know where, so he just randomly checked classrooms and shot people within them. Although he was calm and cold-blooded, he really didn’t have that good of a plan to get somebody specific, if that was indeed his plan. The rules of gun possession on campus were probably not something that rose high in his consciousness during his planning.
So what would have happened without the rules? Once again, we can only speculate. If some students or staff did normally carry or stash weapons, perhaps with concealed weapon permits, it seems likely that at least one of them would have interrupted the shooter’s spree sooner than he did himself. Probably not in the dorm, but somewhere in the classroom building. Not all the weapons-carriers would be heroic types; not all would even be on “the good guys” team; but probably someone would have taken matters into their own hands. Many people likely would have been shot before anyone would have been able to respond. But without any weapons available (except perhaps to another law-breaker), the odds were close to — or exactly — zero that anyone would or could respond to the shooter’s rampage.
On the other hand (there always IS another side), what would happen if guns were allowed on this campus? Blacksburg is not exactly a large metropolis; it is in the middle of part of the country where hunting, privacy rights, and even rebellion have been part of the local culture for centuries. Perhaps the presence of weapons on a university campus, combined with growing but immature minds, and the volatility of new and different social situations would lead to occasional small gunfire incidents. Maybe, in the long run, the death toll would be similar to this rampage. Or maybe not. It’s close to impossible for us to know. Twenty small shooting incidents at campuses across the country don’t make the same lasting headlines as one big incident, do they?
