The report the Virginia Tech Review Panel plans to release today will contain “hard-hitting recommendations” and sharp criticism, the group’s leader told The Examiner on Wednesday.

Va. Gov. Tim Kaine commissioned the study to examine all aspects of the April 16 rampage at the Blacksburg university in which gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members before committing suicide.

“The report will give a detailed accounting of everything from Cho’s childhood through the April 16 incident,” said Gerald Massengill, a former Virginia State Police superintendent, who chairs the panel. “It has some hard-hitting recommendations. Some recommendations will say how things could have been done differently. We also will have some recommendations that clearly say things need to be done another way.”

The panel, which also includes former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, will offer its views on how Virginia Tech officials handled to the incident. Some parents of victims have said the university should have shut down after Cho shot two students in a dormitory.

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Several hours passed before Cho, a senior studying English, stormed into a classroom building to finish his killing.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger last week defended the decision to keep the campus open.

University police initially believed the dormitory was a domestic dispute and did not suspect the beginnings of a massacre.

“Such a lockdown is simply not feasible on a campus the size of a small city,” Steger said.

Massengill would not discuss specific recommendations Wednesday but said the report contains a chapter on Virginia’s gun control laws.

Cho should have been blocked from purchasing the two handguns he used in the attacks, but a loophole in state law prevented authorities from learning that he was found to be mentally ill in December 2005 and therefore legally barred from owning a weapon.

Advocates for more restrictive firearms laws have argued the killings prove their case, while gun-rights supporters have said the rampage could have been halted if students were allowed to carry weapons on the university’s campus.

“The report will cover the entire event,” Massengill said. “We will have some key findings up front for folks who don’t want to read the entire report in one sitting.”

jrogalsky@dcexaminer.com