I have a hard time getting my head around this broad reading of the 2nd Amendment. I'm just not convinced that we've evolved enough as a society to understand that whatever else may be going on, you don't solve problems with violence (as a rule) and deadly force. Police officers need to be able to defend themselves and innocent people with deadly force if necessary. That's what happened in UT a while ago when an off-duty cop took out a psycho that was shooting people in a mall. But that's not the same as Joe Schmo down the street having his own private arsenal in case some undesirable moves into his neighborhood. Guns were designed to injure and possibly kill things and people. I understand someone defending his home, but I don't understand the level of plain old fear that causes someone to believe that if you have a semi-automatic weapon concealed on your person that makes you safer. The people I've met who believe that are not typically sane or stable individuals. I'm all for keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but my sense is that unless we as a country get past this idea that we all need to be armed to the teeth to protect ourselves from some nebulous threat, we are creating more criminals, not fewer of them, as this horrific incident and so many more in the last decade illustrates. Consider the fact that we have the largest arsenal of WMD in the world and we have in fact deployed them not once, but twice in combat. Yet we're telling nations like Iran and N. Korea to disarm, and we are currently in a war with a country that we TOLD PEOPLE had WMD when they did not and had not for some time. Our government knew that and went to war anyway. Do the math. If we stockpile the largest cache of the most destrcutive weapons ever devised, and defend our right to do so, it seems to me that it's not a long walk to creating law that allows private citizens to pack heat "just in case". The line of reasoning that supports this broadly defined "right to bear arms" is psychotic.

I recognize fully that this is 20/20 hindsight, but consider this, all you who seem to believe there's a left/right either/or position to take here. Cho Seung-Hui was the kind of crazy that almost no one sees coming. In fact to call him crazy or disturbed is to be almost dismissive. Clearly this young man was disconnected from any sort of reality, and quite possibly beyond help of the sort that we have the tools to offer. So with that in mind, I offer this: NO ONE in their right mind is looking for a psychopath to show up at the door armed to the teeth and ready to release his pent-up rage, and NO ONE is prepared to do something should that moment occur. The right's idea that we should all be watching for the first sign of trouble and be ready to prevent it with deadly force if necessary is at least as mad as ruling out the possibility of harm altogether. They seem to be extremes which we do all too well in this country. It's an adolescent perspective that doesn't address the real issue, which is that we still have it in our national consciousness that a violent response makes our problems go away. Road rage, office shootings, school shootings, bomb threats at schools (even if they're bogus), saber rattling at countries which pose no threat, it's all of a piece. We seem to advocate a violent response as the first or second best solution to everything. Now, add all too easy access to weapons, and...well, we have Cho, or the boys at Littleton, CO almost a decade ago.

So it seems we have two options: live in fear barricaded in our homes with our own private arsenals and bring heat when you're going out to McDonald's, or begin to train people to spot the signs and get help to these people before they blow up and take innocent people along with them. Cho's spaceship sailed a long time before this happened, unfortunately. You won't get all of them. But you might get more of them. Throughout this whole tragedy and others like it, the one thing that I can't seem to ever figure out is how almost no one saw this coming who was in a position to possibly defuse this time bomb before it exploded. I guess my point is that we certainly have a right to protect ourselves and that awareness is possibly the best weapon, and not in the whackjob way that the Bush people imagine where everyone's a terrorist unless "we" decide they aren't. I'm not suggesting a violent response isn't needed SOMETIMES, as a very LAST RESORT. But we seem to have lost all proportion around this, and when you have cranks with an axe to grind blaring at you from TV, radio, and the internet, there's no room for anything like balance or sanity. Only the impulse to lock and load and prepare for Armageddon.

Tom DeLay says the current Speaker of the House and the current House Majority Leader are "dangerously close to treason".

Note that the former House Majority Leader stands accused of various crimes during his time in the House of Reps, and is awaiting trial on those charges. Which leads me to think he is "dangerously close" to doing time in federal prison and becoming somebody's personal bitch. A role for which he is particularly suited, having served in that capacity so ably while in Congress.