Arm students to prevent tragedy

I am saddened and shocked by the shootings at Virginia Tech last Monday. This reminds me of an incident that happened at another Virginia college five years ago. In January of 2002, another disturbed student went on a shooting rampage at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va. In that event, the gunman tragically killed three people and wounded three more, but was prevented from doing any more harm by two armed students, Tracey Bridges and Mikael Gross, who used their own handguns to stop the killer, with assistance from two other students, Todd Ross and Ted Bensen. These four students are true heroes, and their heroic ability to prevent further tragedy was due in large part to two of them being armed.

The comparison to the tragedy at Grundy with the one last week shows that while being armed for self-defense cannot always prevent tragedy, it can certainly reduce the number of victims. While the three deaths and three injuries in Grundy were certainly tragic, having 32 victims dead, as happened at Virginia Tech, where carrying weapons for self defense is totally outlawed on campus, is a far greater tragedy by an order of magnitude.

I am outraged that our governments and colleges keep requiring peaceable men and women of good will to be defenseless victims when confronted with evil. It is far past time that we start allowing them their most basic human right of self-defense.

Mark Boberg

Oak Harbor