Washingtonpost.com asked prominent think tanks which public policies failed and what can be improved in the wake of the the Virginia Tech shootings.
The events at Virginia Tech were truly terrible. We grieve for the students, their friends and families. We don't know what forces drove the troubled student Cho Seung Hui, but we should not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of self-condemnation.
After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, many pundits asked plaintively "What has become of America?" The outpouring of "We are all guilty" that followed was uncalled for and counter-productive.
After 9/11, some opinion-shapers said, "Why do they hate us so?"
These events have counterparts in modern history, events that are often more intense, with greater ferocity and much worse results.
America is no longer a six-gun-toting, slap-leather society. Nor are we particularly violent. Since the civil war we have not afflicted great violence on other Americans. Nor is our crime rate particularly high as ranked among the countries of the world.
Most of our states now have "Right to Carry" laws that lower violent crime rather than raising it. As John Lott has pointed out in More Guns, Less Crime, criminals are afraid of their own injury by a not-so-helpless victim.
And so, perhaps counter-intuitively, after these horrific events, there is not much we can or should do. We are doing fine.
Ben J. Wattenberg is a senior fellow at AEI.
