After the death toll was established at 33, the focus of reporting and analysis shifted to the how and the why of this national tragedy.

I heard the following questions and statements raised:

• How can we prevent this from taking place on another campus?
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• Why is it that these massacres seem to be happening more frequently at schools and colleges?
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• There is little more we can do in an open society and open campus to prevent this kind of violence.
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• Nothing can stop a determined, lone gunmen from wreaking this kind of mayhem.
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• We need to get serious about strengthening our gun laws in this country.

That, I'm afraid to say, is what passes for free and open debate in our free and open society on our free and open airwaves.

Either no one dared say what I am about to say or no one who believes what I am about to say was invited to participate in the free-for-all on 24-hour tragedy TV.

There is a way to stop this.

There is a way to prevent this.

We've followed this simple recipe in the past with good success.

All it takes is common sense and the guts to implement tried-and-true policies.

Here it is: It's time to abandon the totally failed plans of turning our schools and campuses into "gun-free zones," which, when they are invaded like Virginia Tech was invaded yesterday, become shooting galleries with live, captive, helpless, human targets.

Here is a simple fact to consider.

All of the school shooting sprees that ended quickly, without massive losses of life, have done so because one responsible person had a gun and used it.

Is there any doubt in your mind that one student or one faculty member with a gun could have ended this carnage yesterday with a greatly reduced death toll?

In fact, simply the knowledge that any student or any faculty member could be armed might have prevented this unknown assailant from hatching his deadly scheme of mass murder on campus.

As my friend Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, points out, "Isn't it interesting that Utah and Oregon are the only two states that allow faculty to carry guns on campus. And isn't it interesting that you haven't read about any school or university shootings in Utah or Oregon? Why not? Because criminals don't like having their victims shoot back at them."

As WND pointed out hours after the shooting yesterday, just last year the Virginia legislature killed a bill to enable those with concealed-carry permits to keep their guns with them at schools. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hinker said then: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

I hope those words are haunting Hinker today. I pray there are members of the Virginia legislature who recognize today how unwise that vote was. I trust that other legislators around the country finally learn this hard lesson.

We must stop our houses of learning from becoming slaughterhouses.

There are only two ways we can go:

• One is to hire many more policemen, have them work around the clock, install metal detectors and institute frisking policies as some public school districts have done. That's the wrong way.
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• The other way is to permit faculty members and students who have carry permits to carry their weapons just as they do in other venues – venues, I might add, that seem considerably safer than the sanity-free zones we have created on campus.