Like so many others around the nation we would like to express our condolences to the Virginia Tech community and the families of those who lost loved ones in the shooting on Monday.

That said, are there national lessons to be learned?

The chief one, it appears, is the importance of robust mass notification capabilities. This aspect of homeland security has received increasing attention in recent years and rightfully so. In any community, especially one as close-knit as a college campus, mass notification through a variety of devices and means is critical. These capabilities have increased and we can expect this tragedy to be a further spur to their development and distribution.

Of course, mass notification is dependent on a human decisionmaking chain. In the VTech case, authorities were conducting an investigation of the first shooting prior to notifying the campus. During the two hours they were working on it, the shooter reloaded, put together the media package he mailed to the NBC network and mailed it, and decided to proceed with a mass killing and went at it.

The two hours between the first and second shootings are going to be subject to an enormous amount of scrutiny in the coming days. On the one hand the campus authorities clearly didn't want to alarm or lock down the entire school if they were only facing an isolated incident, which they were vigorously pursuing. On the other hand--obviously--they weren't able to stop the shooter before the second round of shootings.

It will be easy for observers to criticize that two-hour delay but, trying to look at it from their perspective, they seemed to be acting sensibly. We will see what new information emerges in the days ahead.

It is safe to predict that in the near future school and campus officials will err on the side of caution. There will likely be numerous campus lockdowns in coming days as every potential incident results in a jittery response. That will be followed by stories of absurd overreactions and complaints about disrupted routines and classes.

Eventually the sense of alarm will dissipate, a sense of security - if not complacency - will return and we will all go on until the next incident.

The gun control issue

An incident like this raises anew the issue of increased gun control but it probably won't last long this time. For all intents and purposes the gun control debate is over. Political losses by gun control advocates in the 2000 election--including Democratic front runner Al Gore, who lost his own state of Tennessee in part on the basis of his support for gun control--pretty much ended a robust gun control movement.

A telling testament to this is the fact that congressional Democrats are showing considerable caution before calling for new gun control measures and nary a peep has been heard out of presidential candidates on the subject.

The chief political fallout from the incident is more likely to be a dampening of the gun rights movement's efforts to roll back existing controls.

In the end the VTech rampage is most likely to just reinforce the status quo.

Risk versus security

Homeland security professionals know that homeland security itself is a balancing of risks versus security: How much risk are you willing to bear in a given situation? There is no perfect security. We could achieve perfect security at airports if we strip-searched every individual arriving at the terminal. Clearly, that's neither viable nor acceptable, so we accept a certain amount of risk by allowing free access to airports while reducing that level of risk with somewhat limited access to airplanes.

Even extremely high security measures are no guarantee of perfect safety, as witness the bombing at the Iraqi parliament building on April 12. Despite repeated searches and stringent security, a suicide bomber was able to explode a bomb vest in the very heart of Baghdad's green zone.

Here at home we have made a decision, by whatever imperfect means, that we as a society are willing to endure the occasional random rampage in exchange for the relatively unfettered right to bear arms. As long as arms are cheap and widely available there will be lunatics who will buy them and use them to senselessly kill people. Nonetheless, we have judged that is a small price to pay for widespread public access to legal weapons.

Under these circumstances, there's no doubt that there will be future rampages. It's a risk we've all decided--actively or passively--to take. Just add it to the risks of terrorism, hurricanes, earthquakes or car crashes that we all live with every day.

If any good is to come out of the VTech rampage, it should be to try to distill what lessons can be learned from it and to think through a proper balance of risk versus security. If there’s a determined examination of what happened and a resolve to improve the security environment, then these deaths will not have been in vain.

Online Editor's Note:

Two Virginia Tech students on campus during the horrific shootings that killed 32 people earlier this year will share their experience with university presidents, school administrators and law enforcement officials at the 2007 National Campus Security Summit May 30 at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) in Edmond, Oklahoma.

"This event will not be an analysis of everything that happened at Virginia Tech," said summit co-host and MIPT Executive Director Donald Hamilton. "Experts are examining all aspects of that terrible day. Even so, hearing the voice of some of those most directly affected is a powerful experience, one that reminds us of what is at stake and why we need to press for the right balance of openness and security, of safety and liberty."

"Their world was turned upside down by the actions of one man," said summit co-host and UCO President Roger Webb, a member of the MIPT Board of Directors who testified at the recent Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs hearing, "Security on America’s College Campuses,” that “it’s important for those in charge of student safety to hear what happened and its impact on this campus community."

The summit is the first of its kind in the US since the tragedy in April at Virginia Tech and pulls together speakers from across the country to offer practical ideas that will help protect our most vulnerable targets.

David Paulison, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be the featured speaker, as well as former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt.

Deadline for Summit registration is May 23.

For more information, go to the 2007 National Campus Security summit website at www.campussecuritysummit.ucok.edu.