Anniston Star: It's time to grieve: Save the debate for later

Here are the Anniston Star's editors on yesterday's tragedy at Virginia Tech:

When lives are lost, especially when lost in a hail of bullets fired in unexplainable anger, the basic human necessity to grieve is critical. We need the proper time to mourn, to remember those gone, to seek a higher understanding.

If ever there is a time to mourn, it is now. ...

It is natural, of course, to re-evaluate procedures and debate issues after cataclysmic events. There is nothing wrong with critical reassessment.

But there is a fundamental problem if interest groups co-opt the grief that hovers over Blacksburg and use it for timely gain. That should not happen now. Not while the pain remains so severe. Not while it’s so difficult to think objectively.

Now, here are the Star's editors, just a couple of short breaths later:

Re-evaluating where America rests on critical issues such as gun control and school violence should occur. If the Blacksburg deaths lead to true reform and progress, that at least would be a positive to emerge from such horror.

Interesting how the pain subsides so swiftly.