Expert says rush to blame obscures the true villain

From Tom Kirkendall comes this link to an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by Gary Lavergne, the director of admissions research at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lavergne is an expert on the Charles Whitman shooting at UT back in 1966, and an author of a book on the subject. He sees similarities between what happened years ago and the recent shooting at Virginia Tech:

It is vitally important for all to remember that there is only one person responsible for what happened in Blacksburg, and that is the man who pulled the trigger ...

No one died for lack of text messages or an alarm system. They died of gunshot wounds. While we painfully learn our lessons, we must not treat each other as if we are responsible for the deaths that occurred... This is not a time for us to torture ourselves or to seek comfort by finding someone to blame.

As I wrote here, sometimes bad things happen. Our rush to point fingers -- quickened now in the 24-hour news cycle -- doesn't benefit anyone.