VT: One Week Later

A week after the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, I have so many thoughts and opinions to share, but very little time to write them out. Perhaps I will compile and edit my thoughts soon, but until then, I will simply post some articles that I found compelling and helpful during the days following the tragedy.

On our culture of passivity
Mark Steyn writes I haven’t weighed in yet on Virginia Tech — mainly because, in a saner world, it would not be the kind of incident one needed to have a partisan opinion on. But I was giving a couple of speeches in Minnesota yesterday and I was asked about it and found myself more and more disturbed by the tone of the coverage. Read the rest here.

Nathianel Blake wonders, Where Were the Men? and, just for asking, gets called the "worst person of the year"

Weighing in on the tragedy...
Doug Phillips:
Thousands will be deeply affected, probably for the rest of their lives. The most serious pains belong to the mothers, fathers, and sisters and brothers of the murdered victims. What shall we say to them? What are we to learn from these events? Read here.

Doug Wilson on VT and atheism:
Let's tie two timely issues together. This is sometimes dangerous, because when issues are timely, they are also frequently raw, and this means that it is easy to be misunderstood. But I will try to state this basic argument against atheism as briefly and as clearly as I can.
Read more.

Resources and Statistics
Desiring God posts helpful resources for those who want to know how to respond to tragedy.

Ligonier offers this month's Tabletalk online.

George Barna has some interesting, insightful statistics.

The BBC weighs in with their opinion on gun control. They try to be balanced, but still come off sounding as though we would be better off if we, like the UK, banned firearms altogether. Thankfully, they were honest enough to provide this statistic:
There are no recent statistics available but UN figures from 2000 showed for every 10,000 Americans, 0.3 were killed by firearms... In Switzerland where every man of military age is required to keep a gun at home as part of the country's civil defence policy, the number of deaths per 10,000 population was 0.05. (emphasis mine)