Virginia Tech Tragedy and the Gun Debate
First, my heart felt condolences to the victims , their families, friends, and the whole Virginia Tech family. What a sick incident yesterday, that's the only way I can think of to describe it.
The editorialists are of course already asking "how did he get the guns", a legitimate question, but only to a point. Illegally is probably the answer, the serial numbers were obliterated on both of his weapons.
I was surprised last night, while watching Lou Dobbs (I was in a restaurant, and couldn't pick the channel) when one of his guests basically said Lou, if easy access to guns were the problem, we'd have had tons of these types of things happening in the 1950s, 60's and 70's, when pretty much anyone could buy one anytime, just about anywhere.
Wolf Blitzer got the same answer about 45 minutes later, both he and Dobbs had these incredible looks on their faces, wondering how their guests could possibly challenge the conventional wisdom that access to guns, period, is the problem.
The fact is both guests were right, it's not the access to guns that caused yesterday's tragedy. Such things have happened in Britain and Japan, both of whom have very strict gun laws. They didn't happen here 40 years ago when gun laws were nearly unheard of. Something else is the cause of the problem, not the guns.
We'll probably never truly know what caused this guy to snap in this kind of way, you don't just shoot dozens of people like that if you are having a bad morning. We'll get a week of listening to the talking heads try and figure him out. But some things are probably never going to get answered.
Hopefully, for the comfort of the survivors and the victims families they'll learn something during the investigation. Knowing why a guy is nuts is better than never learning why the tragedy happened.
Technorati Tags: Guns, Violence, Virginia Tech
The editorialists are of course already asking "how did he get the guns", a legitimate question, but only to a point. Illegally is probably the answer, the serial numbers were obliterated on both of his weapons.
I was surprised last night, while watching Lou Dobbs (I was in a restaurant, and couldn't pick the channel) when one of his guests basically said Lou, if easy access to guns were the problem, we'd have had tons of these types of things happening in the 1950s, 60's and 70's, when pretty much anyone could buy one anytime, just about anywhere.
Wolf Blitzer got the same answer about 45 minutes later, both he and Dobbs had these incredible looks on their faces, wondering how their guests could possibly challenge the conventional wisdom that access to guns, period, is the problem.
The fact is both guests were right, it's not the access to guns that caused yesterday's tragedy. Such things have happened in Britain and Japan, both of whom have very strict gun laws. They didn't happen here 40 years ago when gun laws were nearly unheard of. Something else is the cause of the problem, not the guns.
We'll probably never truly know what caused this guy to snap in this kind of way, you don't just shoot dozens of people like that if you are having a bad morning. We'll get a week of listening to the talking heads try and figure him out. But some things are probably never going to get answered.
Hopefully, for the comfort of the survivors and the victims families they'll learn something during the investigation. Knowing why a guy is nuts is better than never learning why the tragedy happened.
Technorati Tags: Guns, Violence, Virginia Tech
posted by Crazy Politico at 4:53 AM
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