The chorus of voices calling on Congress and legislatures around the country to bring about better gun control following the campus massacre at Virginia Tech has already begun.

"For too long Congress has stood idle while gun violence continues to take its toll," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., in a statement. "The unfortunate situation in Virginia could have been avoided if congressional leaders stood up to the gun lobby."

But experts on U.S. Catholic campuses say many other factors played a role in the Virginia Tech tragedy and the solution to campus violence will involve much more than gun control.

For some people, gun control is a personal cause. McCarthy, who is Catholic, has made it her signature issue since before her election to Congress in 1996. Three years before she took office, her husband was killed and her son wounded by a shooter's rampage on a suburban New York commuter train.

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, said tragedies such as the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech "are the inevitable result of the ease with which the firepower necessary to slaughter dozens of innocents can be obtained."

"We allow virtually anyone the means to turn almost any venue into a battlefield," he added in a statement. "In the wake of these shootings, too many routinely search for any reason for the tragedy except for the most obvious --- the easy access to increasingly lethal firearms that make mass killings possible."

Although many Washington insiders see little chance that Congress will approve comprehensive gun control legislation before the 2008 elections, James Kelly, a professor of social work and director of the Grace Ann Geibel Institute for Justice and Social Responsibility at Carlow University, a small Catholic liberal arts school in Pittsburgh, says the tragedy might serve to convince a wider segment of society that gun control is necessary.

"Gun violence in the urban centers of this country has been a problem for many years," Kelly told Catholic News Service April 18. "But for most people it has not risen to the level of social problem that requires a universal approach."

Because "any parent can identify with the parents of these (Virginia Tech) victims," now the group with a stake in the debate over gun control "is in a sense all of us," said Kelly, who is also an associate professor in Carlow's School for Social Change.

Kelly said the shootings also might serve to shine a light on the increasing number of college students with mental health issues. He said he has seen a growing problem at Carlow and heard from colleagues that the same thing is happening on their campuses.

"At least for a period of time some attention will be paid," he said. "But will it be piecemeal? Will any program be identified (that will make) people feel they're actually doing something? I don't know."

Don Lindley, who teaches psychology, sociology and criminology courses at Jesuit-run Regis University in Denver, was a member of the Denver Police Department for 33 years. He endorses a two-pronged approach to the problem of campus violence.

First, those responsible for campus security must be "given the tools they need to do the job," including adequate training, decent pay and respect for their professionalism, he said. "And they must be armed."

Many in the academic community might find that unacceptable, he said. "But I find it a great deal more unacceptable to have students" killed or wounded by violent individuals on campus, he added. "And we know we have violent people on our campuses or with access to our campuses."

The second part of Lindley's solution is for everyone on campus --- and in society in general --- to "take more time with people, try to identify when someone is hurting."

"How long does it take to give someone a social stroke?" he asked. "And that might be all that someone needs."

The Rev. Bill Stewart, a philosophy professor at Carlow who is also a Pentecostal minister, says the solution to campus violence might need to go all the way back to 360 B.C. and Plato's "The Republic," in which the Greek philosopher advised the censorship of artists and poets who have "a propensity toward images of vice."

With the average U.S. child viewing 12,000 to 15,000 murders on television by the time he or she reaches adolescence, Americans need to rethink what they are doing to themselves by accepting "a culture awash in images of violence," he said.

"The larger issue is this: All of us appreciate the expiration dates on our food cans and we know there are certain things we should not ingest," Rev. Stewart said. "Are there certain things that we are ingesting into our own souls that we should not?

"We all know that a certain diet can contribute to hardening of the arteries," he added. "But a hardening of the heart can be worse."

In their 1995 document, "Confronting a Culture of Violence: A Catholic Framework for Action," the U.S. bishops also said "no one response" can solve the problems of gun and other violence in our society.

"We have to address simultaneously declining family life and the increasing availability of deadly weapons, the lure of gangs and the slavery of addiction, the absence of real opportunity, budget cuts adversely affecting the poor, and the loss of moral values," they said.

---CNS