Virginia Tech Shooting 2010 Anniversary?

April 16, 2010 is the third anniversary of the horrific Virginia Tech shootings. On April 16, 2007, police, faculty, and students faced the deadliest massacre by a single gunman in U.S. history.

Several Virginia Tech students and five teachers were killed in the shooting. The gunman, a student named Seung-Hui Cho, ended the shooting spree when he turned the gun on himself.

I suppose Virginia Tech students and the community will stop to remember the worst massacre on a college campus.

How is Virginia Tech going to remember the 3 year anniversary of the shooting now in 2010?

Three years after a Virginia Tech student killed 32 people, the university planned to cancel classes Friday on the anniversary of the massacre.

The Washington Post reported the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus scheduled events throughout the day to celebrate the lives of the victims and commemorate their loss.

Virginia Tech students will remember the people who were killed on April 16, 2007, in the nation's worst massacre by a lone gunman. In a ceremony that has become tradition since then, members of the community will gather on campus and light white candles next to 32 limestone blocks for each victim.

The ceremony has been held annually since the shooting, but it has taken on extra significance this year because of the looming graduation of many of the students who were freshmen at the time of the massacre–a dwindling group that calls itself “the 4/16 generation.”

Virginia Tech, with a student population of 28,000, has been losing students who experienced the massacre and its extended aftermath. Nearly a quarter of them graduated one month after the shootings by student Seung Hui Cho, who killed 32 and himself and left 25 others wounded. Two more classes graduated in 2008 and 2009. The 2010 commencement, scheduled for May 14, will see off most of those who were freshmen during the massacre.

Seung-Hui Cho, a student, opened fire, first in a dorm and later a classroom.

The killer at Virginia Tech was able to legally buy his handguns because the law did not mandate that his mental health records be reported to the federal background check system. Even though that specific problem has since been fixed at the state level in Virginia, a future shooter would still be able to walk into a gun show in more than 30 states (including Virginia) and purchase a firearm(s) from an unlicensed seller without undergoing any background check whatsoever.

Time heals all wounds — or so it is said — but the violence that day that reverberated across the globe won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

If there is one thing a lot of people are guilty of, it’s forgetting that just because the dead aren’t here to speak for themselves doesn’t mean anyone is allowed to speak on their behalf. Activists and politicians would have us believe that changes in the level of gun control (one way or the other) would have saved lives. One activist organization has even gone so far as to literally represent the dead with a disturbing lie-in protest.

Those people at Virginia Tech got united.

Several graduating seniors say their common experience left them with a unique bond, and some worry that after they are gone from campus, the collective memory of the tragedy and of the people who died may fade.

I say it will always stay with them.