Did State Gun Laws Make the Virginia Tech Victims More Vulnerable?
In June 2002, 43-year-old Peter Odighizuwa, a disgruntled student from Nigeria, shot three faculty members at Virginia’s Appalachian Law School but was quickly disarmed by two students who had retrieved handguns from their cars. This raises a painful but necessary question: could students or teachers, had they been armed, have thwarted Seung-Hui Cho’s maniacal killing spree at Virginia Tech? It’s impossible to know with certainty what would have happened had responsible members of the Virginia Tech community had this option, but armed self-defense might have reduced the carnage—especially given the time lapse between the murders of Cho’s first two victims and the thirty that followed. Sadly, we can say that Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker imparted a false sense of security earlier this year when—after a bill that would have allowed students and employees to carry handguns on Virginia college campuses was defeated in the state legislature—he said: “I’m sure the university communit
