The sad young man whom nobody noticed has certainly taken his revenge. The receding fellow feeling suffered inwardly by Mr. Cho at Virginia Tech can only be imagined or reconstructed from his writings at this point, but the harm done to thirty-two other families of the slain, to the wounded and their families, and to his own family, is tragically apparent.

According to yesterday’s television news reports including a touching interview with the family’s mailman, 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui came from a quiet family and a quiet neighborhood, in a quiet northern Virginia suburb, and was a quiet young man. He had been a quiet type in high school and in college through his senior year. Several acquaintances from his high school, from his neighborhood and from Virginia Tech were asked whether they had ever noticed, or whether Cho had ever given, any sign of trouble; the answers were all no, up to a point. Nobody noticed a thing – until recently – because Cho was so quiet and so well-behaved, or at least so quiet, that nobody noticed him.

Something to think about, there.

But setting aside broader thoughts about fame versus fellow feeling, for the moment, news reports have begun to clarify that there were danger signs. There always are. Several fellow students in a writing class had noticed that Cho’s creative writing showed a scary propensity for macabre violence. The students had discussed it among themselves, and the teacher had also noticed it; at least one teacher referred Cho to counseling on campus. One former instructor says that Cho’s writing seemed threatening enough, “under the surface,” that she got in touch with the campus police.

There were other signs, too, smaller and larger. After years of no trouble with the law including traffic infractions, Cho had received two speeding tickets within the past two or three weeks. Worse, there seem to have been a fire-setting incident, and indications from the campus are that he had been the perpetrator in a couple of bogus bomb threats against buildings at Virginia Tech. Even worse, anecdotes are beginning to surface that he had stalked women students in internet chat rooms.

Also, after a quiet twenty-three years of being a non-hunter and non-sportsman, in no apparent fear for his life, under no threat of any sort, Cho bought two guns within the past five weeks.

The purchases were apparently strictly by the book under Virginia gun law: Cho bought a .22-caliber Walther P22 at JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg in February, and then bought a 9-millimeter Glock Model 19 at Roanoke Firearms on March 12. The purchases were timed just far enough apart not to break the law or trigger law enforcement.

Regardless of what lifelong hunters in the NRA may say about this, it’s a danger sign. We’re not talking about a hunting rifle to get deer. These were handguns, with copious ammunition on the side. Young men who buy this type of weapon, in an urban area or on or near a college campus, are not going elk hunting. This is not sport, not self-defense. It’s a symptom.

A gun is putting too much power into human hands. It will be good when our corrupt gun lobby – sponsored partly by individuals in the business world who do little to no hunting themselves, but who can sense the advantage to them in keeping the rest of the population shooting and then executing each other – can be reined in.

For right now, however, the immediate danger is the very real possibility of some horrible copycat incident. I am proud and admiring of, and grateful for, the heroism shown by several people at Virginia Tech – faculty who tried to shield their students, students including a residential assistant in one of the dorms, custodial personnel – all of them in their individual ways quietly and unpretendingly stepping up to the plate, to put it mildly.

But it would be better not to see that kind of self-sacrificing heroism needed on another campus, over the next few days or weeks. A little quiet alertness to health issues, with or without help from our gun-lobby-whipped officeholders, is called for.