Guns, glorious guns
I find it offensive that President Bush showed up at the memorial service for the 32 slain Virginia Tech students and professors a day after he directed his spokeswoman, after news of this atrocity broke, to emphasize that he still supported the mythical individual right to bear arms that is second only to God and possibly above God among diehard rightists, Christian or otherwise, in our bleeding country. Hopefully the families of the slain drew some comfort from his presence and words, but what did it accomplish?
Why bother to mourn these innocent dead if nothing is to be done about the method used to kill them? If we continue to allow clearly-troubled people like Cho Seung-Hui to buy and own personal weapons of mass destruction, these atrocities will continue to pile up. Columbine, the Amish school massacre in Pennsylvania last fall, and now this, along with other school shootings too numerous to mention. By the way, I have to wonder if the killer copied the well-publicized methods of the Amish slayer when he chained shut the doors of the classroom building at Virginia Tech.
The AP story at the link above speculates that Cho Seung-Hui had high-capacity ammunition clips for his Glock handgun, clips that were banned until the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress allowed the Brady Bill to expire in 2004.
The U.S. press has so far shied away from presenting the full horror of what this 23-year-old man unleashed on his fellow students yesterday. But the Australian press has been far less reticent. Here is a story from the Brisbane Times about the experience of one young survivor of the massacre. It is not for the squeamish.
I'm about to the point where I would support a Constitutional amendment repealing the 2nd Amendment, which could then be replaced by a sensible federal gun control law enacted by Congress. Despite clear wording that limits the right of gun ownership to an organized state militia, i.e., the National Guard, gun "rights" advocates choose to focus only on the second half of the 2nd Amendment. Get rid of it, start over, let people live.
By now, the gun lobby and its minions have their story down. Oh, what a tragedy, they wail. If only teachers and students were armed, one of them could have taken out the shooter. If you need any help finding that ridiculous, think back on the procession of teachers in your life, from kindergarten to college. How many of them can you imagine shooting it out with a determined Cho Seung-Hui? Any?
(And by the way, conservative bloggers are all but calling the male students of Virginia Tech wimps for not fighting back. Of course they know exactly what went on there. I might pay attention to bleating like this one day if the young conservatives rushed to enlist to serve in the Army or Marines in Iraq.)
No, the answer is tight restrictions on gun ownership . That is the only thing that has a prayer of stopping future atrocities like this. The answer to gun violence is not more guns.