Letters to the Editor
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Where are all the 'well-regulated militias' in times like these?
I live in Alberta, Canada, where we similarly feel it is our God-given right to own guns (without any constitutional justification, however).
Those who argue for leniency in laws regulating gun ownership often make nebulous claims about how guns supposedly make all of us safer from the evil criminal elements that be, or something to that effect.
Yet how come the 'well-regulated militias' of law-abiding gun-owning citizens are never to be found defending us all from evil? Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc. You'd think that at least once we'd see an NRA member rise from the crowd, Rambo-like, to put an end to the madness with one well-placed bullet from their responsibly-owned rifle. Well, where are they all? Too busy attending rallies?
Could it be this argument is merely a canard with no supporting evidence whatsoever?
Nah. Couldn't be.
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or you can blame the Web
Computerworld reports that a search of Cho's PC revealed that he had bought empty magazines/clips for at least one of his pistols from a seller on eBay; thus potentially circumventing any controls from Virginia or the federal government
in my father's day, if he was very angry with someone, he would confronted the miscreant face-to-face with no weapons (and for you gun-toting smartasses out there, during WWII, he had served as a fighter pilot in the USAAF: he knew about guns!) but he would not have reached for his old .45 pistol
these days, apparently, drawing a pistol, shotgun or assault rifle is the first step towards resolving a grievance and not the last step
apparently, the only "law" that the NRA and the conservatives want is the "law of the gun" in which the victor is the first person who shoots accurately: there is a place where this is the common way of life, this place is called Baghdad and I fervently hope that every NRA member packs his/her weapons and moves there at once.
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Hands off our guns!
I have to agree with the rightwing gun nuts on this one. The presence of a gun does not magically make people want to pick it up and shoot people until you run out of bullets. There are other causes at work here. When my father attended college in the 50s, he and his dormitory roommates all had rifles under their beds, and no one gave it a second thought. They liked to hunt. Neither they nor anyone else ever grabbed those guns and went on a rampage. It happens here in the US, and it started happening recently. What's causing it? Two things: the brutal, alienating culture and the overwhelming prevalence of dangerous psychotropic drugs prescribed by psychiatric quacks.
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The more people that are prescribed
"I don't care" drugs (I don't care if my life is a mess, I don't care if my family is falling apart, nothing I do will make me care one way or another, etc), the more likely that someone will do things that a require an "I don't care" mind. It's not the guns, it the drugs. Living straight in a Prozac world.
Poco
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simple solution
I don't know about the good & bad of gun ownership, but I am galdarn sure that gun-related homicides could be reduced significantly by legislation outlawing their production. Outlawing drugs doesn't work because you can't reduce supply--too easy to brew the stuff in your basement and grow it in your greenhouse. However, it's hard to believe that theer could ever be a substantial cottage industry of gun production, and anyway, natural selection would take care of the fistfull of morons who choose to use homemade AK47s (bye bye, Ted Nugent!). A 'war on guns' would work if production was outlawed, plain and simple. I guess the question we should ask is whether such an extreme measure is worth it.
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A Brilliant Skewering Of The Right Wing Punditocracy
I was wondering whether anything even mildly amusing could've been written in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings. But leave it to TT to come up with it.
A safe haven for satire is always provided by extremists, one in which TT has thankfully taken up residence. I can't wait for the next right wingnut like Robertson or Falwell to tell us this:
"If only Virginia Tech had posted the Ten Commandments!"
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THESE are the good old days.
Just a few points:
1) When the first cars hit the streets around 1900, newspapers (remember those?) frequently ran stories about drive-by shootings. (Mostly drunken joy-riders, I suspect.)
2) Mass murders are exceedingly rare TODAY, just as they were always exceedingly rare. But, in a population of 300 million, they will happen. More Americans accidentally drowned in bathtubs last Monday, I suspect, than were killed at VA Tech. More than 2 million of us die every year, after all. (For the arithmetically challenged out there, a million is a LOT bigger than 32. Trust me.)
3) No non-policeman NRA member, to my knowledge, has EVER stopped a killing spree. Can anybody give an example?
4) There will always be crazy people, and some of them will get so crazy they want to kill somebody. When it happens, give me a crazy with a kitchen knife any day... not a crazy with a semi-automatic pistol!
Life's not perfect, and things could be better... but THESE are the good old days.
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Careful what you pine for
At many NC state universities, security is the real police. The cops in whatever city or town the facility is. Oh sure you might you feel safe until they start arresting everyone under the sun for bullshit alcohol and pot busts. You really don't want to fuck with North Carolina cops either. And in NC, a crime committed on state property automatically carries a 50% stiffer penalty. Be aware also that courts in NC don't typically respect the lack of any search warrant either in such cases as a matter of the school taking an in loco parentis role. See the problem with giving people authority is they then don't ask your permission on how or whether to use it.
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One simple question...
Why does _anyone_ need an assault weapon? What are the odds that the Crips or Al-Queda is going to roll up on any American gunowner's house and start a firefight? One could argue that if Cho had been limited to owning a hunting rifle, he would have killed less people--and been more vulnerable to being taken down.