In conversation yesterday with someone with a son attending Virginia Tech -- who's all right, thank God -- both of us recalled hearing President Bush's spokesperson defend gun rights BEFORE the president himself said he was sorry about the massacre. Did we hear that right? Is it possible that the first words out of this administration was more solicitous for gun manufacturers than for the family and friends of the slaughtered?

I came home and starting searching the Internet and couldn't find what I thought I remembered, so I dismissed it as a fevered imagination caught up in the horror of yesterday.

But this a.m. Barry Saunders confirms our memory: minutes before President Bush appeared at the lectern, he sent out his spokeswoman Dana Perino to say, "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms."

How tone deaf can you be?