Sadness filled The Western Word’s (TWW) heart on Monday when the story broke about the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech University. I watched many of the news reports from CNN, FOX and MSNBC all day long on Monday and part of Tuesday.

My only thoughts were, “Why?” I decided not to blog about this incident until now.

My heart breaks for these students, their families, and the leaders of Virginia Tech.

The news organizations across the world jumped on this story and reported. Many of their initial reports proved to be false or inaccurate, but that is normal because competition is the name of the game in the News world. Experts were called in the give their thoughts. Commentators gave their opinions. Every news organization had people on the ground reporting. Some reporters were very pointed with their questions and very unprofessional in addressing the leaders of the school and law enforcement personnel during the initial press conference. They seemed to fail to realize that the people they were questioning were numb and were just starting the piece together the horrific events.

Anti-Gun as well as Pro-Gun groups made comments defending their beliefs.

TWW hopes that everyone steps back and takes a deep breath. Let the professionals do their investigations, gather the facts, and issue a report.

On the news wires today, at least 10 schools across the country had copycat threats, including Great Falls High School where a note was left in the girl’s bathroom that said, “the shooting would start at Great Falls High at 12:30 and it would be worse than Virginia Tech,” That’s shameful. You can’t stop stupid people from doing this, but you can try to catch them and give them very severe punishment. I hope they do.

God bless the students, their families, the faculty and all those affected. You are in our prayers.