There's a certain amount of discussion emerging now as to whether the VA Tech shootings show the need for more gun control, less gun control, or for folks to not instantly appropriate tragedies in order to kickstart dormant policy debates. For what it's worth, I line up in the third camp, and with the LA Times, which editorializes, "No newspaper [or blogger -- Ezra] is in a position to criticize anybody for capitalizing on tragedy or taking convenient positions. There will be time for both in the days to come. But now is a time to respect, quietly, the tears and the pain of this terrible event."
The desire to segue instantly into an argument over gun control reflects, I think, the human ache to establish control -- however illusory -- over a tragic and senseless event. In the same way we're vaguely comforted by knowing that a horrific car accident was the result of an unbuckled seat belt and a lung cancer came from a lifetime of chain smoking, we want to be able to say that if we only change this law, tweak that policy, we can prevent this awful killing from ever being repeated. Sadly, I'm largely with Atrios on this: " if people want to kill people and don't care if they get killed or caught they're going to kill people." Thankfully, most humans are decent and very few are murderous, and so despite the countless firearms and cars and gasoline cans laying around this nation, mass killings remain blissfully rare.
