Letters to the Editor
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Well that was a lot of nothing
Two pages, and but a single concrete instance of what "gun control" might mean (the capacity of the magazine). One of the biggest problems of the gun control/gun rights debate is that no one knows what the hell we're talking about. A good part of the folks that hear "gun control" think it means taking away their guns (no one is seriously proposing that). A good part of the folks that hear "gun rights" think that it's the ability to keep a fully automatic AK in your backseat (it generally doesn't).
Magazine capacity aside, neither side of the debate can point to Blacksburg as evidence of anything. Nothing would have changed had either extreme set of proposals (which, again, mostly exists in people's imaginations) been adopted.
The media needs to talk sensibly about the gun debate. That includes being familiar with the actual proposals AND the practical effects. This is to say nothing of the fact that journalists ought to have the first clue about guns if they write about them. Koppelman's piece didn't hurt, but it certainly didn't help.
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The anti-gun argument....
...is right up there with the antiabortion argument. At this time in this country it's a serious gut-reaction issue, and a hardcore group of people aren't going to buy it.
Of course the shooting at Virginia Tech makes the issue pertinent once again, but so far it appears that the shooter bought at least one of his guns legally and passed the background check with no problem. Of course he would as he had no previous record.
There is no way to identify all the things that can get us. All we can do is be alert. Rather than jumping on the gun-control issue, I'd like to to see us take mental health seriously. At least we'd be looking at the people most at risk of doing harm to themselves and others. And maybe helping them before they go off the rails.
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I fail to see how this is a failure of the Democratic Party...
Salon -- this piece represents some crashingly poor political analysis. The lack of meaningful gun control policy since Clinton is somehow the fault of the Dems?
Umm. As I recall, except for the brief period when Jeffords switched parties, until January we had been living in a country governed entirely by Republicans at the federal level. Almost all the policy, legislative and judicial decisions of the past 6 years have been driven overwhelmingly by Republican agendas -- not Democratic ones.
So even if the Dems have retreated on gun control issues (and, frankly, Koppelman is either being lazy or stupid by invoking the positions of such "stalwarts" as Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman as representative of the Dems because when last I checked neither of them was a Democrat) it's hard to see how Democratic equivocation has made any difference.
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All the gun control legislation you can name would not have stopped this killer
Someone bent on mass murder, who planned his crime well in advance, will be able to get a gun or guns somewhere. They always do.
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How about some pharmaceutical control.
Guns and happy pills make for a hazardous mix. To be fair, stricter controls on the anti-depressants and how they are prescribed would be just as effective as more gun control.
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I'm with Lucy
How about everybody start taking an interest in moody loners who write plays and poetry about mass murder and gristly torture?
This morning on a different thread I gave my best guess and wrote:
"On the campus of Virginia Tech, I believe time will reveal that there were a number of people who knew this shooter and that he made them very uncomfortable... "
Sure enough, at the end of the day today the media has been interviewing Cho's writing teacher who has been trying to get the attention of the local police AND the VA administration on repeated occasions, each time with increasing urgency concerning the writings of the shooter and his strange behavior that made her and several of his classmates very uneasy.
So many people today interviewed in Blacksburg said, "nobody could see this coming. It was out of the blue."
No it wasn't.
The teacher went to the police - they did nothing. She went to the school administrators more than three times - they did nothing.
Look folks: When people act crazy, it's usually because they actually ARE crazy. This guy gave everyone plenty of warning.
As I said this morning: "It is incumbent upon people to be vigilant and to realize that they could be the only one who could avert the next tragedy. The teacher said it best when she said that she didn't give up, she kept contacting the authorities several times.
Even though it turned out to be a massacre, at least she was one person who really tried.
Damn the school administrators. I hope the parents of the dead kids sue the shit out of the school administrators. They were warned repeatedly and didn't do jack shit.
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Gun Control ... an unwinnable issue
Just go and read the Second Amendment. I would like to support Gun Control as much as anyone, but ... the honest truth is ... it's unconstitutional.
And ... to me, the Constitution is more important than any single issue. I would support an Amendment that "modifies" the 2nd Amendment, but ... when we start calling for amendments to the constitution, we get into lots of other stuff that, to me, is much more important, and much more dangerous, than Gun Control.
Let's face it ... VaTech screwed up monumentally in failing to follow up on all the leads in "the shooter's" writings, and in failing to lock down for 2 hours. Now, VaTech will "pay the fiddler." That's the way it works. If VaTech doesn't screw up, two people die. As it is ...
Later,
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Anti-gun laws are useless
It all comes down to the fact that criminals don't care about gun control laws. The only people who are bothered by high capacity magazine bans, pistol grip bans, flash hider and bayonet bans, are honest people who have to do handstands to understand the poorly worded ill-defined laws. The guy carting around kilos of dope or bent on a massacre doesn't care.
I wonder how many students would NOT have died if even 10% of the faculty had been carrying guns, concealed or not. Maybe the shooter wouldn't even have tried. I have yet to see any anti-gunner admit such a possibility, let alone discuss it.
If you could remove all present and future guns by rubbing a genie lamp three times, you could certainly eliminate gun violence. Gun control laws can't eliminate more than a fraction of guns, and that fraction comes mostly from the good guys who obey laws, thus worsening the good-guy / bad guy ration.
Gun control laws increase gun violence.