Alphecca: Ban All Guns?

March 28, 2005

Ban All Guns?

That seems to be the implication by Laura Washington in this Chicago Sun-Times editorial:

After 16-year-old Jeff Weise shot himself and nine others to death last week on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota, the post-mortem focused on child psychiatrists, educators and law enforcement officials who speculated on what triggered his rampage. They recommend more metal detectors in schools, closer monitoring of child mental health, curbs on media-based violence.

The boy used a gun that belonged to the grandfather he murdered. Still, the issue of gun control seemed to stay mostly under the radar. It's as though we have come to a place where society has accepted gun violence as an irrefutable fact of life -- and death.

The guns Weise stole from his grandfather (and used on him) were ordinary ones by Main Stream Media standards. The gun used at the Atlanta courthouse was a service pistol taken from a guard. I mention these two examples because no matter how draconian new gun control legislation becomes, it would not have prevented these shootings. Banning "assault weapons" wouldn't have done it because so-called "assault weapons" weren't involved. Closing the "gun show loophole" wouldn't have prevented anything in these cases.

Therefore, I can only assume that while the writer dismisses such suggestions as curbing media violence and closer monitoring of kids, she seems to think that -- since it's all the fault of the gun -- those have to disappear from our culture. Does she then mean ALL GUNS?

But that's not ever going to happen because criminals will never surrender theirs. It will simply leave the rest of us at the mercy of soaring crime by emboldened mutants as has happened in England and Australia.

I had predicted that op-eds like this would start appearing in short order after the Red Lake incident. Unfortunately, I was right.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at March 28, 2005 07:19 AM

Comments

When they call it "gun violence", it's an attempt to pass the blame onto the tool instead of the user. If we pushed a magic button and made all guns disappear, then we'd have nutters attacking schools with crossbows, and concerned-sounding soccer moms whining about "crossbow violence"

This debate is about the right to use force for self defense, not guns. Given free reign, these people would ban anything marketable as a weapon, censor any speech or publication that promotes self defense (because it "glorifies violence! oh no!", even ban martial arts training, all to make a world where they wouldn't fear others flipping out and injuring them. Just look how close they are to all that in the UK.

And why do they fear others? Because going postal is what many of THEM would do if they carried weapons. These are the hysterical people who scream at you in the parking lot, flip you off on I-95, and yell at their kids in the checkout line. They can't control their temper, so they assume no one else can either and therefore wish to disarm the rest of us.

It won't work, of course. A determined man with a metal pipe in a subway car is no better than one with a pistol.

Posted by: Tim in PA at March 28, 2005 05:39 PM

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March 28, 2005

Ban All Guns?

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah