By the time you read this post, you'll know more about the latest shooting spree than I do as I write on Thursday evening, so I'm not going to get into the details. Besides, they're irrelevant to my point- I heard about it 3 hours ago, and I'm still horror struck.
I'm an ardent individualist and classical liberal, so I've always been something of a 2nd Amendment Absolutist.
But... I'd really like to know if there is any way we can screen out the people who are just one too many cups of espresso away from going on a rampage, or the people who grow and nurture hate the way others raise children, from the rest of the populace? There's a lot of hot headed, ignorant, and even evil people out there... and the idea that any one of them is entitled to have the means of exerting deadly force with the greatest of ease is most troubling.
I think its time for a Bloom County style "Dandelion Break" but since they're all under snow drifts, I'll have to settle for my puppies and my callipygous wife.
Full disclosure- these guns are not in the US, they were just the most impressive picture I could find at the Wikimedia Commons- my favorite source of royalty free photos and art.
From the description at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gun_pyre_in_Uhuru_Gardens%2C_Nairobi.jpgPyre of smuggled weapons in Uhuru Gardens, Nairobi, Kenya. Original caption states, "A cache of more than 5,000 smuggled guns ready to be set ablaze at Uhuru gardens (peace grounds) during the peace support effort between the warring countries surrunding kenya and the communities leaving on the porous boarders of Kenya. This was in an effort to bring peace and end killings in the Northern part of Kenya."
12 comments:
You should have armed guards or trained students patrolling the schools, there should be a shooting range on all campuses, to be used as part of a gun safety course. Now i know this sounds a bit crazy, but it's really not because if you have students trained to fire and shoot on target as well as practicing gun safety, you will also have trained students armed on campus to stop the mad man. It may sound like then an average student could go on a shooting spree being trained and having arms on campus, but the reality is if one tried he would be stopped almost immediatlly just like any other mad man would if they had this. The question is not to take guns away but to train and distribute to the citizens.
I know that's the standard libertarian/convserative answer, and its one to which I'm sympathetic and to which I've generally adhered... but I still have to wonder.... do we- as a nation- really want EACH AND EVERY CITIZEN to hold the right of life and death over others?
There is a substantial difference in the amount of planning and effort it takes to kill someone with... say... a sharpened stick, and the amount it takes to kill them with a glock or a shotgun!
I also wonder... on a larger level... if our society itself hasn't changed such that universal gun ownership is an idea as outdated as outhouses. We are an impatient, self absorbed, immature lot as a nation. As per my "postmodern meltdown post"- the very ideas of absolute right and wrong are not universally accepted anymore. When each person does what is right in his own eyes (cf Jdg 21:25)... do we really want them doing it with firearms?!
Heres the issue, you have irresponsable assholes with guns. And you have your law abiding citizen. Generally the gun is owned by the law abiding citizen, the asshole on the other hand represents a small portion but the thing is, guns are gone crime rate goes up, home burgalry rate goes up. As soon as the criminal doesn't have to fear the gun, we're fucked. Most crimes actually involve illegally possesed weapons but we never here about those no gang bangers killing each other. We here about the white boys shooting 5 people in a school. You know shootings banger to banger are so common the newspapers don't even consider them news. Those weapons are all illegally possessed. I'm not sure what the weapon was in the case of this shooting. Oh, and another reason I don't want my guns taken away is that, as soon as there gone whats to stop the government from taking more rights away from me, you take away the second amendment because its outdated, you take away the bill of rights because all the amendments are equally old. What's to stop freedom of press next. Free speech goes, you can't stop the government you can't really revolt with sticks and baseball bats can you.
Problem is simple...you have a place with a lot of cars, you have a place with a lot of traffic...more cars, more occurences of accidents.
Same with guns. You have a nation with a lot of people, scattered among them some very unstable people, and then give each of them the right to own a gun, eventually the unstable ones go into rampages.
As far as safeguarding against the government, I find it curious that the party which is so quick to affirm gun rights is also the same party that embraces eaves dropping, suspension of Habeus Corpus, torture, rendition, 'speech zones', government controlled media in the guise of free press, the system of checks and balances, etc., etc., etc..
Mike, if you want to assure that it never becomes necessary to take up arms against your country, all you have to do is protect the Constituion from those that would ammend spuriously and enforce the system of checks & balances and make sure that the press is kept independent and competitive. Moguls like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, Clear Channel, etc., should not be allowed to hold the collective purse strings of our major media outlets.
Over the past seven years, Mike, while your right to own a gun has been protected, the Bush administration has gone in and crippled your rights as a citizen on many levels. Sure, it starts out with 'The Terrorist' but eventually, we're asking, 'well, who are the terrorists?' Mitt Romney apparently knows...he implied before CPAC that anyone who would vote for a Democrat is enabling terrorists. That kind of bullshit coming from a man who came so close to becoming President terrifies me even more than a random shooting that happened yesterday. I will always fear the person who, in an organized--politically or religiously sanctioned--methods to takes away our rights, than the occasional looney who abuses them.
As for guns, mu problem is automatic weapons! They belong on the battle field, not the hunting range, not the streets and certainly not in the average citizen's closet! They don't let people own grenades for a reason...the same logic must be applied to automatic weapons in civillian hands.
As I said a whild back on JoJo's blog, if the right to bear arms is as a protection against government abuse, why is it never used against them? Surely shooting Bush dead is every citizen's duty?
It seems to people like me, in a virtually gun-free country, that the US is stuck in the 19th (or possibly the 18th) century and needs to be dragged screaming into the modern world. In Britain we manage to get by with a police force that does not in the ordinray course of events carry guns, only specially trained officers in armed response units have them locked in special lockers in their cars, and are specially trained to use them.
And still they managed to murder Jean Charles de Menezes in cold blood.
BB- Great comments, well said.
Val... you are astute as well. Our tradition of gun ownership, the 2nd Ammendment, etc., all hearken back to a day which is long past.
There was a time when RIGHT and WRONG and the INDIVIDUAL'S RESPONSIBILITY TO SOCIETY were woven through out the fabric of our culture.
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That fabric has come undone... we are a nation of self absorbed adolescents.
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RG, thanks for the new word of the day: callipygous. May be able to use it soon, as Mr. D'Onofrio can't seem to stop adding extra poundage. :>)
Snark- its a word which is almost as luscious to say as the reality to which it refers!
My "nicest" nickname in high school was "dictionary breath." As a young lad when the other kids were playing pong and watching cartoons, I was reading encyclopedias and the National Review and dictionaries.
It shows, RG . . . it shows . . . LOL
Yes, but Britain has 50% of home invasions hot, which means the criminal knows someone is home but chooses to invade anyays, here in the U.S. its a tiny 8%
Mike, my solution for home invasions as well as burglary is to make the punishment so harsh, that nobody would dare try it. Having been the victim of a burglary, I have no problem whatsoever making it a capital offense...and had I been home at the time and had a gun, I would've had no compunction in blasting the fuckers' heads off! With that kind of temperament, however, it's probably better I don't have a gun in the house afterall, though I do feel better now having a burglar alarm in the house rather than a gun. Perhaps the Brits simply need more security systems.
Ditto, Betty. We are way too f*&king lax on criminals here in the U.S. Probably why I so enjoy those awful Charles Bronson movies where he goes on a vengeance rampage and just starts blowing away bunches of scumbags. Okay, so it's a guilty pleasure . . . hee.
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