Below is the Review of Virginia Tech: Make Sure It Doesn't Get Out that appeared in the April 13th edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
In the long and escalating history of gun violence in America, one of the darkest chapters was written in Blacksburg on April 16, 2007, when student Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 students and staff members before killing himself.
In “Virginia Tech: Make Sure It Doesn’t Get Out” (315 pages, CreateSpace, $19.95), Kilmarnock resident and retired CIA officer David S. Cariens Jr. examines the massacre and its aftermath, with emphasis on the events that led up to it.
His goal, he writes, is threefold: “to expose the abdication of leadership and authority by politicians, school officials, and law enforcement personnel … to raise public awareness … and to help all families understand what they can do in insisting that universities and colleges have in place effective security measures and that those measures are understood by faculty, staff, and students.”
Cariens, who teaches intelligence analysis and writing in the U.S. and abroad, paints a disturbing portrait of a devastating tragedy that occurred, he writes, “because people ignored the warning signals.” He concludes: “Nothing will change until all segments of society — priests, rabbis, ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, politicians, blue and white collar workers, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, everyone — say enough is enough. Individuals can make a difference by demanding that more money be spent on mental health care, holding people in positions of trust accountable when their actions and inactions result in the deaths of innocent people, and finally, by not re-electing those who are in the pockets of the gun lobby.”
