Okay, I don’t often find myself screaming epithets at people on TV but I just made an exception. Because of the terrible incident in Virginia I’ve occasionally veered away from my usual Treehouse TV fare on to CNN, a network I have to admit I rarely watch. A short while ago I flipped over just in time to see a commentary from some fellow (I’m going to assume his name is Cafferty) on the Cafferty Files. If I can summarize his commentary it went basically like this.
– Guns are fairly easily obtained in Virginia
– One restriction placed on guns is that they are not allowed on most schools or campuses
– Madmen will take advantage of this knowledge, knowing their victims will not be armed.
– IF ONLY people could have guns at schools and campuses this madman could have been killed before the death toll reached as high as it did.
????
Okay, I know media attention is focused on the Virginia killings, as well it should be it was a terrible senseless act, but how many other people were killed (by ones or twos) by gun related violence in the US yesterday. How many deaths does it have to take before people realize the problem is too many guns not too few.
And while I’m on a rant. Is it just me or does the media seem to be trying to blame the school and/or police for this tragedy? I thought blame in this was pretty much a slam dunk.
Comments
3 responses
Thank you for commenting on that. The “not enough guns” thing started while the bodies were still warm. Somehow the fact that the shooter was an armed student does not enter into the discussion.
And on the second point, the officials are not the only ones getting blamed. So far I have seen blame directed at the victims, one specific woman victim, Muslims, immigrants, scientists, coed dorms, and study of the humanities. It’s not enough to have the shooter to blame; everyone has to insert political agendas.
Unfortunately, the political hacks for the “too few guns” and “too many guns” crowds are hard at it in the wake of this senseless act of depravity. In an open society like ours one has only to look at the ease of access to illicit drugs to understand that getting rid of guns is impossible as a practical matter. Such a policy would only criminalize the millions of gun owners who use them responsibly every day. One might also offer the Libertarian argument that the freedom of many should not be infringed for the bad acts of a few, but that’s a different topic entirely.
I think focusing on the gun is a convenient, but erroneous course. Convenient because it gives us something upon which we can heap our collective outrage, anger and frustration. Erroneous because the true blame for this tragedy lies with only one person– the perpetrator. The most recent news indicates that there were warning signs about the shooter’s personality with which we have become painfully familiar in the wake of similar incidents– Characterizations such as ‘sullen’ ‘loner’ ‘angry’, and someone described as being ‘detached’ from the rest of the VA Tech community. Mr. Cho was removed from one class because of his behavior and writings, and the campus police apparently were aware of incidences of stalking, yet no preventive measures were taken to remove this man from the community. Yes, he got a gun and wreaked terrible destruction with it, but he might as well have done the same with a home-made bomb, or by driving a car into a crowd (as happened at another southern university not so long ago). In other words, the tool used is irrelevant. Those bent on evil and destruction will find a way to accomplish their ends, regardless of the restrictions we may place upon society at large.
Thanks John and LG for your comments.
I think that my arguements on gun control (which I think I have something to contribute, having been on both ends of firearms) need to be fleshed out more in a large post. We agree in essence on one key point LG, that being that spree killers such as Cho Seung (or Marc Lepine to use a Canadian example) shouldn’t be a focal point of the debate. Apart from pointing out that the vast vast majority of spree killers (or certainly the successful ones) used firearms, not vehicles driving through crowds. I believe it was Elliot Layton who described the spree killing as a suicide note on a huge scale, most of them intend to die and in their twisted diseased mind want to make some sort of statement in their death.
Part of my point in my short rant is that the attention should be focused on the other firearm related deaths that occur daily. The United States, arguably, has the most open firearms laws in the developed world, and also has the most gun related violence. How that correlation is lost on people escapes me. I realize that violence is a far more complex problem than just guns=violence but it does contribute to it.
Being a “legitimate gun owner” myself, I fail to understand how I am to be criminalized by having greater control put on my guns. And I should point out that every handgun I had the misfortune of looking down the business end of belonged to a “legitimate gun owner” who felt that he 1) would be safer on his fishing trip with or 2) felt his home was safer with one in the drawer. They of course were no where around when their guns were stolen by someone who used the opportunity to point them at me later.
And a quick comment on the fact that we could never get rid of all the guns by having laws against them. (While I’m not advocate of a prohibition of guns I am an advocate of controlling them). We don’t have a single law that is 100 percent efficacious, we have laws against murder but we never make the arguement that the laws are not going to prevent all the murders therefore we shouldn’t have the laws.
Like I said, thank you for your well thought out commentaries, this calls for a much larger post.