My blood boiled yesterday as I started reading right-wing blogs immediately jump on the “give everyone guns” mentality following the shooting at Virginia Tech. Details will still emerging on the deadliest mass shooting in our country’s history, yet the wingnuts figured they had a political card to play here. Michelle Malkin had a post immediately following the breaking news, which linked to another post and said this:
Just imagine if students were armed. We no longer need to imag[in]e what will happen when they are not armed.
Ok – I’ll play along. Let me imagine that. If we had students armed, there is a chance so many would not have died on April 16, 2007 on Virginia Tech, but how many would die on other days? How may boyfriends would get pissed at their girlfriends, or find them cheating and decide to use that “justice maker” they have under their coat?
Let’s look at that another way. The descriptions show the gunman barging into classes and opening fire. If students had guns, chances are they wouldn’t have time to react. Who says they even know how to shoot the damn thing or a good aim? Instead we could see a higher fatality rate yesterday. Another question remains unanswered – did the shooter use all his ammo? Did he take his life when he had only 1 bullet left to do so? If the students had guns, that could have given the shooter much more ammo to continue his rampage and we might be looking at a higher number of fatalities today.
As typical for the right, history teaches nothing. Sure there were no mass shootings like this back in the 1800’s, but there was a lot more killings. Why? Everyone had guns. They were very easy to come by and people needed them just to hunt so they could eat.
Shortly after the news of this tragedy, White House spokesperson, Dana Perino, also took to the podium. At that time she offered the President’s deepest sympathy’s, but also this little line:
The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed
Here we go with the second amendment argument. Fine, let’s look at that. The second amendment was passed in 1791, along with the Bill of Rights. A lot has changed in 216 years, and most noticeably, those changes affect the second amendment in the way of technology.
In 1791 we didn’t have semi-automatic or automatic weapons. Firing and reloading meant taking a few seconds. Now those few seconds equal a large number of extra shots being fired and people being killed.
As typical with the right, they only like our first ten amendments when they benefit them. The first amendment is good when they feel Christianity is being persecuted, but there first amendment rights are being violated if they are not allowed to persecute other religions (the 11th commandment – though shall be a hypocrite). The fourth amendment is old and out of date and shouldn’t apply to emails. Remember – Bush said FISA was old and out of date and didn’t change with technology; and that law is only 19 years old!
The fact is technology has changed and the second amendment doesn’t reflect those changes. So if a student has a right to carry a gun into his classroom, does that mean he can carry an AK-47? He better be able to, or you will be infringing upon his second amendment right!
There has also been some excellent technological advances in the world of firepower. One of those changes involve small electronics contained within the grip. This circuit prevents a gun from firing if in the wrong hands. This technology was also quickly dismissed by the gun lobby and manufacturers because “it would increase the cost of guns”. Yeah – we are much better now than we were before. Glad we saved a few bucks!
Our country has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the world. Virginia has even more relaxed laws. Yesterday Jack Cafferty said that our nation has a “copyright” on these type of killings. That is very true. We don’t hear about them happening in other comparable nations like we do here. As matter of fact, we have had more combined incidents of school shootings, than the rest of the world combined. So what is the difference that makes us so evil? The answer is simple – our laws!
To honor the memory of those lives lost yesterday, we must use this tragedy for a national debate. The assault weapons ban must be re-examined and tighter gun control must be put back into the mix. The answer to someone shooting a bunch of people is not more guns, it is less. It is not guns that shoot faster and more bullets, but less. This is something that will require the combined efforts of everyone in this country, but together we can make it happen. We can make America a safer place.
I will be going into the “Hollywood” factor in my next post.