People who know me know that I've made a wide study of school shootings. I did this as research for WINTER AND NIGHT, but I wrote WINTER AND NIGHT because I wanted to understand what was going on. I have very little to add to what's been written about Virginia Tech, except this: the focus on the killer, how disturbd he was, what could have been done about and for him, is misguided. He was identified; he was observed; he was discussed. He was referred to counseling. He didn't go. He needed help. He didn't get it.

But to commit this crime he needed guns. He got those, easy as pie.

When I was in college, a depressed, angry student hanged himself on a stair landing. The students who found him were shocked, sickened, and traumatized, which was his intention: I'll show you, you bastards. That was this killer's intention, too, to show the bastards. In another time and place, without semi-automatic firepower in easy reach, his tragedy would have been suicide.

My argument in WINTER AND NIGHT was that the focus on the killers keeps people from seeing what makes them into killers. In a novel, that's important. Here, I would argue that what made this kid a killer is irrelevant. Upbringing, psychosis, a chemical imbalance -- none of it would have mattered to anyone but him if he hadn't had guns.