THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS....

THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS. The massacre in Blacksburg, Va., yesterday is already raising fresh talk of gun control, because mass shootings always do. But before people get sidetracked into that morass, they should take a close look at other the policy issue this tragedy has thrust into the national spotlight: domestic violence. Because the first victim was a woman, and possible had a romantic connection to the killer, the police did not see her murder as a threat to the community. Now the police are pretty plainly telling the public that they failed to warn the campus there was a killer on the loose because they failed to understand that men who kill their partners are also threats to society. And they are saying this by way of exculpating their actions. Reports The Washington Post:

Although the gunman in the dorm was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later."We concluded it was domestic in nature," Flinchum said. "We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state." He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a "lover's dispute." It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.

Murder is murder is murder. I realize that events unfolded rapidly, and that two hours is a very, very short time in the life of a police investigation, and that the police may just be casting around for a post-hoc defense against the castigation that is sure to come, but the idea that you don't warn people that a killer is on the loose just because you think he killed his girlfriend seems like 1950s thinking.

UPDATE: Note that the University of Texas Clock Tower massacre, until yesterday the deadliest school shooting in American history, also started with a domestic incident, with the killer stabbing his wife and mother the night before going on his rampage.

UPDATE II: Perhaps a better point of contrast would be the way Virginia Tech shut down the campus and cancelled all classes on the first day of school just last fall after an escaped prisoner killed a police officer near, but not on, the campus. Clearly, there was recent precedent for shutting down the campus.

UPDATE III: The latest news is that the first female victim in fact had no connection to the killer, and that the first two murders may not have been a domestic violence incident at all, but rather the beginning of the killing spree by the disturbed student, and that the domestic incident framework the police put on the initial killings was inaccurate and led them astray. Whatever the truth is revealed to be in the days ahead, one thing is clear: In those rare circumstances when students are murdered on a college campus and there is no suspect in custody, other students need to be informed immediately, regardless of what the circumstances of the intial murders are believed to be.

--Garance Franke-Ruta