The early-morning shooting rampage that left at least 33 people dead, including the gunman, at Virginia Tech University on Monday, is as shocking as it is horrible.

Besides those whose lives were ended in a murderous rage, another 26 were injured at the campus nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia.

Eerily, Monday's shooting took place nearly eight years to the day that two teenagers on April 20, 1999 killed 12 students and a teacher, and wounded 24 others, at Columbine High School in Colorado before committing suicide.

As at Columbine, the lives of those who have survived this random mass killing at Virginia Tech University will be forever changed.

The soul-searching among the survivors at Virginia Tech will include questions such as: Why was I spared death? Could I have done something more? Why another school shooting?

We know little yet of the gunman who apparently took his own life, except he began his murderous rampage about 7:15 a.m. at a coed dormitory and ended it in a building across campus some two hours later.

This much is known: When it was over, Monday's massacre had become the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, surpassing the 23 shot to death in 1991 at a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas.

The terror students must have felt as wave after wave of gunfire echoed across the Virginia Tech campus is nearly unimaginable.

Witnesses described students leaping out windows to escape possible death and of others being lined up against a wall and shot. The scene was chaotic as frantic students and faculty carried the wounded to safety and an army of police and SWAT members armed with assault rifles descended on campus.

Once the ordeal ended, the university immediately set up a place for families to be reunited with children, and made counselors available to students and faculty members.

In the days and weeks ahead, the nation will begin questioning and seeking answers as to how this quiet, peaceful campus could suddenly become the scene of such violence and bloodshed.

Likewise, officials at college campuses, indeed all schools, across the country should review security procedures.

The hard truth, however, is that nothing short of turning schools and college campuses into fortresses will stop a killer bent on murder.

We can put safeguards in place, but there is no single step anyone police, school officials, lawmakers or parents can take to prevent it from recurring some other day at some other campus. But this is not to say we shouldn't try.

So today, we join the nation in its search for answers and in mourning the loss of so many young people.