you've missed the point I was making. There's a whole chorus of people right now saying "if only the students had been armed" that somehow this terrible tragedy might not have occurred. They are advocating that students/faculty should be allowed to carry concealed firearms onto school campuses and into classrooms in order to protect themselves.

Nevermind that incidents like these are

1. Seldom

2. Unpredictable

3. Unforseeable

Also, the presence of a firearm in the hand of another student is in no way a guarantee that

1. That student will use it.

2. That student won't wound or kill somebody else.

3. That student won't still be killed, possibly by their own hangdgun.

4. That student won't be mistakenly identified by police as the gunman and killed by police.

As well, the possession of firearms by students on campus opens the opportunity for

1. Misfires

2. Lost weapon to be used in the commission of another crime.

3. Crime whether it be planned, premeditated, or spontaneous in reaction to a confrontation with another student or faculty member.

The argument I'm putting forth is that this idea that "had the students been armed" would make any difference is ridiculous, really. If someone is intent on taking out a bunch of people, most likely, it's going to happen and nothing really is going to stop it until it's too late and somebody has been killed.

Hence the off-hand reference to Iraq. This shit happens there all the time and a lot of those people are armed and yet the violence continues and people still die.

Just having a gun on you does not mean you'll either be able to stop a crime, prevent a murder, or lessen the amount of bloodshed but what happened at VT is being used, right now, as a base to argue 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms in the face of gun control legislation.

That's politicizing the tragedy. And all I'm doing is pointing out the error in that argument.