Wrongful Death Trial in Tech Killings Goes to Jury - ABC News

Jurors began deliberating Wednesday over a lawsuit filed by the parents of two students slain in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre claiming school officials botched their response when the first reports came in that a gunman was on campus.

Maybe now the university and public can start to think about the reality of gun-free zones...

Attorneys for the university have countered that there was no way to anticipate the man who committed those first two killings April 16 in a dormitory would carry out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Police had initially concluded the first killings were isolated. Jurors will have to decide whether school officials could have reasonably foreseen that more carnage was going to occur.

And the best way to deal with the lack of ability to defend against that which is unable to be anticipated? Enable law-abiding citizens to practice their natural and Constitutional right to self defense. Of the American universities which allow concealed carry, how many have had shootings? None. Zero. 

Robert T. Hall, an attorney for the parents, said they are interested in holding school officials accountable, not money.

Evidence of the magnitude of the error, Hall said, "were the bodies of the young people on the floors of Norris Hall."

I'd rather those students not been denied the ability to defend themselves based on a baseless and emotional argument. They might still be alive today. 

One of the state's attorneys, Peter Messitt, said Tech officials could not be expected to anticipate the killing spree, calling the slaughter unprecedented "in the history of higher education."

This level of loss of life was partly responsible for the resurgence of concealed carry (Luby's Texas massacre), and has also shown the lack of substance in the restrictions of firearms arbitrarily imposed on college campuses. 

If these students are adults in all other regards, what sense does disarming the make? Concealed carry is regulated by states, so it's on the universities to defend the gun-free zones. 

A jury of seven in the civil trial will also consider damages for the families, but they have not been told the award is capped at $100,000 for each family under state law. The state is the lone defendant. Two alternates were dismissed before jurors began deliberations.

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http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=15919872