Gun control: the bloggers’ view

Matthew Weaver
Tuesday April 17, 2007

After the deadliest mass shooting in American history you might think that Virginia Tech killings would prompt a rethink about gun control in the US. But No. If anything American’s stance of the right to bear arms is hardening, judging by what the bloggers have to say.

Trish and Halli, two harmless looking old ladies who post “great recipe” suggestions from Idaho, argue that some of the 32 deaths could have been prevented if guns had been more freely available. Halli posts: “If some students and faculty had been carrying their legally permitted guns today, it is likely that a few deaths would have occurred. However, in at least two instances the murderer chained classroom doors closed and proceeded to fire at students. In all likelihood an armed student would have stopped him before 32 people had been executed.”

Similarly Frank Staheli argues that if more students carried gun there would be fewer spree killings.

The National Rifle Association is reluctant to be drawn on the issue, But Gun Owners of America demands a end to gun-free zones in schools and campuses. It says: “It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when murder is in their hearts.”

So what about the politicians? The leading Democratic presidential contenders all steer clear of advocating gun control. Instead Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all turn to prayer.

According to Robin Toner on the New York Times political blogging site the Caucus says that Democrat hopefuls don’t want to harm their chances of election by calling for gun control as Al Gore did in 2000.

John Nichols in the Nation argues that US has failed to learn the lesson of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.

Raised in Chaos calls for a deeper examination of the malaise in American society She says:

“The issue is not guns, and while I personally believe there should be no need for them in a “civilized” society, and that fucking ANYONE shouldn’t be able to pick up a rifle and a pack of Cheetos at your local Wal-Mart, this is not the context in which to have this debate.

Instead, when a man with a gun (and do we know yet if he was a student or not?) strolls into a college dormitory at 7 a.m. and starts shooting people at random, we really need to take a critical look at the kind of society we live in.”

[…]

BBQ was taking the ‘why have they not banned guns line’ from the outset, and these same morons are also dismayed by the thinking of people like Paul Craig Roberts:

[…]

Guns have been around for a long time, but these crazy shootings are a new development that point to a failure of culture to produce people with a sense of responsibility and self-control. When I was a kid, a youngster could walk into a local hardware store and buy a gun. There were no restrictions. If a kid was so young that he couldn’t see over the counter, the store owner might call a parent for approval. We all had guns, and we never shot ourselves or anyone else.

One of my grandmothers thought nothing of me and my friends playing with the World War II weapons my uncle had brought back. My other grandmother never batted an eye when I collected my grandfather’s shotgun from behind the door and went off to match wits with the crows that raided the pecan trees or the poisonous cottonmouth snakes that could be found along the creek that ran through the farm.

My grandmother never worried about me until I got a horse, a more dangerous object in her view than a gun.

We also all had knives, which we carried in our pockets to school every day. We never stabbed anyone and very seldom cut our own fingers.

We often had fights, more often wrestling each other to the ground than fist fights. No one ever thought of pulling a knife or a gun on his antagonist. Parents and teachers did not exactly approve of fights, but they considered them natural. We were not arrested, handcuffed and finger-printed for being in a fight. […]

You need to read the entire article.

My brother kept guns at the age of 16; an M16 and some handguns. We had a ball with them. I did shooting at school as a sport. Guns are not a big deal, and they are not the problem. They are actually a huge amount of fun and a fantastic sport to be involved in.

‘Matthew Weaver’ says attitudes are hardening. Actually, everyone is fed up with the illogical and absurd newspaper lead idea that because someone snaps and goes berserk, we should all pay a penalty by having to suffer a raft of new and hastily drafted regulations.

Its appalling and sad when crazy people do stuff, but the law abiding should not be made to suffer a reduction in the quality of their life because a single nut-case does something terrible.

It is this same knee jerk mentality that allows people to think that its OK to ban home schooling because there was a single instance of a family that didn’t pull it off ‘correctly’, or the genocide of a whole breed of dogs because one owner let his dog bite a little girl. It is madness to live that way.

It is the criminals who should be made to conform to community standards, not the community being whittled down to the level that assumes everyone is a potential mass murderer or dog fighter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Someone Clever Said, The Facts.