I have been doing a fair bit or research into the law of self-defence in Canada as I am defending a young person in a stabbing. No doubt the law is confusing, however, the facts seem to dominate the case law. The outcome of the use of force in defence is no where near as important as the proportionality of the force. I think my guy has a good defence.

The defensive use of guns will surely be a topic in the inevitable debate on gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. At Virginia Tech, they had a "no gun" policy. That's fine for the law abiding, or even for those who do not abide with the policy but aren't using their guns. However, when some nut decides he is going to shoot the place up, that policy means squat. Reading Captain Ed, I found this link about a school that probably did not have such a policy:

The abrupt ending to Odighizuwa's shooting spree is attributed to two students with personal firearms who quickly took action.

I so feel for the students and families that went through this mess at Virgina Tech. Despite the social scientists inevitable commentary, the fact was that these kids and professors were just going about their daily business and did nothing to deserve what happened.  As I posted after the Dawson College shootings:

....these poor kids ... did nothing to deserve this. There will be probably some talk in the not so distant future about bullies, outcasts, American guns, violence on TV, violent video games, dungeons and dragons and the like. However, I suspect that the shooter was just simply crazy. You have to be nuts to pull a stunt like this and chances are at some point in his life he was going to pull a stunt like this regardless of the video games and DVDs. The talk will be idle at best. The standard root causes crap. The kids at Dawson did not deserve this and no amount of blame on external factors will change that. Society did not pull the trigger, the shooter did.

The magnitude of these killings ... it is hard to wrap your head around it.