on yesterday's disaster

I'm just going to say one thing about yesterday's tragedy in Virginia. It seems that some on the Right are already blaming the victims for not being "heroic" enough to stop the gunman.

Statements like this are not only vile and presumptuous, but they ignore the facts. We already have accounts of students, some of them already wounded, barricading doors to classrooms so that the gunman could not enter to do (further) damage. I also read that one of the professors, a Holocaust survivor, did the same and urged his students to escape, while he was killed for his efforts. An RA at the dorm where the first shootings took place was a victim because he tried to intervene in an argument the (same?) gunman was having with a girl there. Acting to help and save others is more heroic than some idiotic Steven Segal fantasy of taking out the gunman.

My heartfelt condolences go out to friends and families of all the victims of this tragedy.