Since everyone else seems to be talking about the Virginia Tech shooting, I figure why not join in on the "fun." It's attitudes like this one which went a long way toward creating the sort of legal environment that made this rampage feasible. Many Americans are actually deeply afraid, to the point of paranoia, of their neighbors owning guns. I don't know that blogger's circumstances. Maybe their neighbors are total nutjobs, but statistically, you aren't likely to get into a violent confrontation with your neighbor, and there are already so many guns out there that it is possible to prove whether or not America would be a killing field if every Tom, Dick and Harry could carry.
The fact is that we are one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. Anyone who wants a gun can buy one, steal one, or find someone who can fabricate one without difficulty. And yet... America is a generally a safe place to live and work. All gun control accomplishes is making it impossible for people like these students to even try an effective self-defense. It's not enough to say, "well they might fail." Well, they might succeed too, but that option was legally taken away from them because many Americans are so bloody paranoid that they assume everyone is out to get them.
As this editorial reminds us, the police failed to protect the students. That is to be expected because the police are not numerous enough to come even remotely close to being able to credibly handle the general public's security like that. With neither firearms of their own, nor police protection, the students were at this man's mercy. People should think about that, the next time they say "oh we'll just let the police protect us, we don't need a gun!"
Others:
Difster.
Pablo.
Thoughts and Ideas.
Arielle.
Bane.
Erik.
I certainly don't disagree! It's just another symptom of our nation's willingness to abdicate personal responsibility in favor of the nanny state.
"the students were at this man's mercy."
While I certainly do not judge those that were shot, I must say the bit where he lined students up against the wall and did them execution style struck me as odd.
Personally, that's the point I would have opted to assume room temperature with two in the chest trying break his fucking neck.
I hadn't heard that he had managed to do that. If that be true, then I have, quite frankly, zero sympathy for anyone who went to their death like that. If you don't fight back in a situation like that, you clearly don't have what it takes to live.
I'm with abe, MikeT.
My earlier comments, from VP:
I just hate watching the CRAP that passes for 'reporting' on the waste-stream media.
This should REALLY piss everyone off.
Here is the "biggest mass murder" ever - only because it takes a nation of disarmed SHEEP to be STUPID and passive enough to be shot like cattle in a slaughterhouse.
It could NEVER have happened in America before the dumbing down and disarming!
This has been pointed out above, but it bears repeating:
This guy had two handguns - a 9 mm. and a .22 pop shooter. One of the "brave young students" shot with the .22 in the arm didn't even know until later that he'd been hit. (Surprise!)
This 'Massacre at Virginia Tech!' would've been over if even one of the sheep had had enough good ole-fashioned pistol-savvy to know that being shot while you rush and then beat the sh-t out of somebody with a school book beats getting shot exection-style in the head...
which is about the only way to get yourself killed quickly with what that guy was packing.
This just shows how deadly the Dreaded Twenty-Two is -
if you cower waiting to be shot in the head.
A metaphor for Amerika if I've ever heard one.
Mark Call | 04.16.07 - 11:42 pm
That's pretty much the way I see it. If you are probably going to die anyway, then you should fight back. I can't say that I find it too terribly tragic when a coward weakly accepts their demise without a fight. I emphasize them being a coward, not a proud lamb going to the slaughter in the Christ-like model.