Among the inevitable "what-ifs" after the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech is this: What if Tech did not ban guns on campus?

Might someone with a concealed carry permit have been armed that day in Norris Hall and been able to stop Seung-Hui Cho's murderous rampage, at least before he killed 32 students and teachers?

If there can be a scenario to make the case for allowing guns on campus, this was it. Gun-rights advocates are making the argument. Lawmakers and school officials should resist.

Most of Virginia's universities bar students and employees, other than police, from carrying guns on campus. Last year, a state House of Delegates subcommittee quietly killed a bill that would have prohibited state universities from enforcing gun bans.

Of course, Cho -- bent on mass murder -- paid no attention to a campus rule.

Rational people do. Gun bans are in place to prevent both accidents and assaults that arise in the heat of the moment, when having a gun at hand can escalate anger into a shooting and possibly a death.

Policymakers have to weigh the likelihood of those occurrences against the rarity of a tragedy such as occurred on April 16 -- and the likelihood that a different gun policy could have prevented it.

The idea that an armed hero would have been lucky enough to have been just where he was needed at just the right time and skilled enough to have stopped a deranged gunman coolly firing off rapid rounds seems more wishful fantasy than sound basis for policy.

Gun advocates point to the 2002 shootings at Appalachian School of Law for support. But the story that armed students prevented more deaths after a deranged student had killed three people is more myth than reality. The gunman had spent his rounds and put his gun aside, then was tackled by an unarmed student.

After such senseless deaths, isn't it more reasonable to wonder: What if these deranged men had not been able to get guns?