Tell It To Tim's Blog

Don't look for a logical explanation to this tragedy.  There won't be one.  Yet we will all try to make some "sense" of the actions of a deranged man.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be the inevitable "angles" that we look for in the news business: "can it happen here?" and "what do you say to your kids?"

In a way that's our coping mechanism. It's our job as journalists to explain complex situations to you. This one defies explanation.

And I have no doubt there will be angry accusations that the university could have done more to protect the students.  That's true, without a doubt.  But the school would have to create a police-state to do that.

Inevitably, there will be lawsuits against the school, the gun-maker and anyone in sight with the deep financial pockets to make it worth the time of the lawyers.  Again, for the families, it's an effort to find someone to blame and to somehow make sense of it all.

Our own daughter called from college today where she and her friends were watching coverage of the story on the news.  There were few facts but much speculation. 

She wanted something to help her understand it.  I could give her little, execept to tell her that it could have happened anywhere: a courthouse, an office building, a factory or on a public bus. I'm afraid that was not much comfort to either of us.

At her school, the dorms were all "locked down."  That means, in theory, that if you don't live in the dorm or are not a guest of someone who does, you cannot get inside. We all know that won't last long. 

Like so many things we will hear and read and say over the coming days, it's a way for us to try to gain control of a situation that seems out of our control.