Seung-Hui Cho's guns were legal, and were not automatic weapons, as many in the media initially speculated.

He was not an illegal alien, but was living here and attending school legally. He grew up in the burbs and his parents own a perfectly legitimate business.

He planned the murders well ahead, and though some people thought some of his past writing and behavior was disturbing, what does one do? We can't detain people for odd behavior or disturbing writing.

All the speculation about his psyche is nothing but fodder for the 24-hour news people to yak about.

We just have to realize that sometimes people will do horrible things that could not reasonably have been predicted, and that no petty law would prevent. Our primary defense against that is our law enforcement people and our security apparatus. The only question here that matters is, what do our law enforcement people intend to do to try to stop things like this from happening again?

We invest quite a bit of money into our security, and we have every reason to wonder why it's not more effective. For all the bitching about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, we have not been hit with a terrorist attack since 9/11/01. So why can't local law enforcement people stop the occasional would-be massacre?

As of today, they should just admit they can't. That's why they're not the only people who should be allowed to carry guns. There is a reason that the crazed murderers that managed to kill more than a dozen people did so in places where nobody is allowed to have hand guns. The UT campus, the Virginia Tech campus, Columbine High School, the Luby's restaurant in Texas (at the time is was illegal to bring handguns into restaurants in Texas).

Those are the only things that those massacres have in common: one or two determined gunmen, and a place where nobody else had a gun handy to shoot back.