The killing of innocents always brings out the conflicting feelings in me.  I feel rage at the evil that was done and helplessness at not being able to do anything as the horrific drama unfolds.

I feel sorrow for the families of the victims, horror at the suffering the victims themselves must have suffered,  and pity for the unmentioned victims, the family of the shooter, for they are victims also in that they well bear his stigma in his coward's death.

But sadly for me, in this day and age, I also feel frustration at the politicians and media (bloggers included) who will spin, promote and demagogue away with this event.  What ought to be a shared moment of national sorrow becomes a media circus in what Michelle Malkin has labeled the Blame-the-guns bias watch.

And the sad truth is that as I watched the events unfold, she was totally correct, within hours the first calls for gun control were generated, one at the President's briefing, another in the promos for the MSNBC Scarborough and Country gun control special.¹

I won't say that the topic is not relevant, nor that there may or may not be some merit to it, but have we lost our compassion to the point that we have to trample on the dead while the steam still rises form their corpses in order to "scoop" the story?

And already one alleged false report has surfaced from such hasty reporting, that being the false identification of the shooter:²

The Internet rumor mill, chasing down leads on the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, has been grinding all day. Allah debunks one of those rumors, which Hot Air received, investigated, and debated this afternoon and evening:

He's not the shooter.

More anti gun reactions at the NYTime and Reuters.

There are some interesting reactions from the blogsphere too.³

Bull Dog Pundit: "In one sentence they say is that it is 'premature to draw too many lessons,' yet they then go on to say that stronger laws are needed over 'lethal weapons,' even though nothing is known about how he got them."