Police officials have not yet had enough time to solve fully the riddle of the worst shooting rampage in U.S. history. It seems, however – at least on the surface – to have been as simple as one, two, three: One gunman, with two handguns, in less than three hours, killing more than 30 people and himself, wounding scores of others at Virginia Tech.

Some blamed the police; others blamed the school administration. Nearly everybody was blamed except those who stubbornly insist that every single American – man, woman and, probably, child – needs a gun.

Today, I am wondering not about whom to blame but about what to do. There isn’t really a way to stop a person if he decides to perform an act like this, not unless he gives himself away (and Cho Seung-Hui, the alleged killer, did not).

But there are ways, legal, common-sense ways, of making it harder to purchase guns. Cho may have purchased his guns legally and recently. And easily. As a resident alien, all he had to do (in Virginia) was prove he resided in the state, and then he was treated with the same laxity as any other Virginian. He purchased a 9 mm Glock in a Roanoke store on March 13 and a .22-caliber handgun within the last week. It has not yet been demonstrated conclusively that these guns were used in the shootings, but guns like them were.

ABC News consultant and former FBI officer Brad Garrett said the purchases showed that “this was no spur-of-the-moment crime.” Cho, then, was methodical, staying within the law. The purchase of the second gun may even suggest that he was aware of the one-gun-a-month law in Virginia. He simply waited.

Easy as one, two, three. Far too easy. Even with one gun a month.

Much has been written about the initial moves of school officials and campus police, who decided, after the first shootings, not to lock down the entire campus. Witnesses apparently had persuaded them that the gunman had left the campus and perhaps the state. Cho actually had moved across campus to an engineering building.

Inevitably, there were renewed demands for increased safety in the nation’s schools, at which dozens have died violently in the last decade. Questions and criticism have been many. Why wasn’t the school locked down after the early-morning shootings? Why weren’t the students informed more quickly?

But maybe those weren’t the questions to ask. There’s probably no way to “lock down” an entire 1,226-acre campus with 36,000 students, faculty members, administrators and employees. Like most universities, Virginia Tech is proud of its open facility, where students and faculty roam a campus with more than 100 buildings and with its own airport. Yes, maybe officials should have gotten the word out sooner. But the bigger questions are those concerning prevention. (How, if at all, can we spot a killer in the making and head off such horrible choices?) And the even bigger ones about our very culture. (Is there something about the way we are here in the United States that makes such crimes more common here than elsewhere?)

President Bush prayed on television and was applauded when he went to the campus Tuesday, attending a convocation that attracted thousands. The Senate and the House offered moments of silence.

But silence is the very last thing the nation needs. What we need to hear are those words: One, two, three. Easy. Too, too easy.

Nobody wonders whether a new record of killing will replace the one set this week in Blacksburg – only when. Behind the frustration, the heartache and the fear is the belief that, as surely as Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s home-run record, the 33-murder mark someday will be broken. Easily.