Gun control vs. gun rights
Predictably, the horrific shooting at Virginia Tech has fed the national debate about gun control.
Gun control advocates argue that the shooter, 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui might not have committed mass murder if it hadn't been so easy for him to obtain the handguns he used to shoot 32 people.
Gun rights advocates counter that guns don't kill people, wackos like Seung-Hui do. They also argue that Seung-Hui might have been stopped if others on campus had been carrying guns themselves.
Here's your invitation to join the debate.
posted by Patrick Rice @ 2:24 PM
22 Comments
22 Comments:
We could be talking about the need to get tougher on domestic violence, or about how to better identify mental illnesses that could result in the injury or death of innocent people. We could be talking about a general alarm system that could be implemented campus-wide to immediately alert the staff and student body in such emergencies so that the people being directly affected would know to either hunker down and bar themselves in or evacuate the campus. We could be talking about making such large and public institutions prepare a link to any video/audio monitoring equipement so that police can immediately see or hear who, what, where and as a result be better able to respond to intruders exhibiting deadly intent.
Blaming guns will not prevent this type of crime from happening again. Just as blaming the car would not prevent a drunk driver from getting behind the wheel again. We need to have a honest look at practical measures that will allow for rapid alert and effective response on all school campuses in our country.
Maybe we should allow teachers to carry guns on campus, in case of emergencies like the one yesterday.
Who the hell knows? Our society has neglected the individuals who need society most. Where is our universal mental health care? Where is our sense of society that absorbs the illegal aliens and hugs the foreigners looking for better education in a global economy?
Would a better societal connection have helped this one shooter? What made him so mad?
What permitted him to run from one spot on a large campus (not unlike many around the US) to another spot there?
What prevented one other student from tackling him and beating him to a pulp? Why were the doors chained? (Please don't carry me like those guards are shown carrying the victims if I am injured or dead--just leave me. Everyone deserves dignity.)
I believe it is a lack of spirituality, a void of community spirit. For, if you have a communal spirit and understand the human condition, you may reach out to others left aside by society. Our American Society has failed, again. Terrorists are not across the ocean, they are here.
You can change gun control laws but you can't change people. People will always have access to guns either legal or illegal and some people will not use them responsibly.
In all fairness, it wouldn't matter if there were stricter gun laws or armed teachers or metal detectors or even emotional chip implants. This guy was heading for a fall and nothing short of divine intervention or dismemberment when he was about to commit to his private personal massacre would've stopped him. If the teachers had guns, it would've ended in a bloodbath since not every teacher would want a gun and some might not commit to gun training as well as the killer. Stricter gun laws would've meant he'd get his pieces from illegal means or just stole them from someone who had legal guns but the bad sense to not keep them locked up. Metal detectors can be fooled and overridden. And I won't even go into that fantasy quip about the control chips.
Bottom-line, personal vigilance is the keyword. If you see someone like the shooter who is about to carry out his bloodbath fantasy, drop the dime on him and start rallying in the people into safe areas as soon as possible. The reason why there were 32 deaths instead of five or six was because the word didn't get out as fast as it should. Plus, if there's a person who has similar traits and can't or won't take his medicine or therapy...just expel him, remove him from campus for the sake of the school, and put him in a cell until he does get treatment or doesn't. Yes, it might violate some personal rights and personally I find the action distasteful, but sometimes strong medicine is called for.
It's one thing to have violent fantasies if you know they are just fantasies and you keep them to yourself or other consenting adults. (I'll confess to having some myself, but I keep them locked up in my mind where they belong!) But when you start trying to impose your own view to others who don't want to share and don't like being creeped out...then you should be dealt with for your own and society's good.
I may be missing something but Virginia's gun laws are so loose that everyone on campus could have owned guns if they wanted. They could also have a carry permit. However, it shouldn't be as simple as "I want to own and carry a gun therefore I will" which Virginia's gun laws almost allow. All gun laws should require extensive, rigorous training and evaluation with background checks as intensive as that required for security checks. Anyone who possessed a gun and did not meet the standards would be committing a felony.
As to the comment about not blaming the gun. 32 folks would not have been killed if the Cho had a knife or a baseball bat. Only a rapid refire pistol could do that. Cho pulled the trigger but the gun fired the bullets and the bullets killed the individuals.
Maybe a teacher wouldn't have been able to stop Cho with a gun... but maybe they would have. Unfortunately, we won't ever know.
I have 22 years of firearms training provided during my military service. I also have complied with every requirement needed to obtain a concealed weapons permit. I am currently a student at OWC. I do not carry a concealed firearm at school because it is prohibited by law. I do however carry concealed at banks, malls convenience stores and most other places on a daily basis. If I were allowed to carry on campus and the same scenario happened around me that happened at Virginia Tech the body count would have been much lower. But as for now I'm a sitting duck. If I can carry safely everywhere else I go on a daily basis in spite of crowds why should schools be different.
The law states that you can't carry on school grounds. That is why nobody had one to fight of Cho Seung-Hui.I personally believe that if you go through all the training to get your concealed weapon permit that you should be able to carry any where. Why shouldn't we be able to. A gun is a tool we use. Its just like any other tool. Until somebody picks it up nothing will happen. Don't blame the gun blame Cho Seung-hui.
I would rather have a child fight til the end instead of standing there waiting for their bullet. Any idea how much damage 15 to 30 middle school students could even do if they all rushed an attacker? I'm not saying that we should have self defense classes at school for something like this but how many kids would of actually died if anyone would of tried to fight back? Some would of been injured and some might of even died but come on people. 33 people died because everyody ran away.
The criminals will always find a way to get guns. Regulation would only hurt the innocent people.
I feel that if you train and commit to earning your concealed weapons permit and do all the test, you should be able to carry a gun all you want. We can't live in a fantasy land and pretend that guns don't exist. From my exprience, most people that were trained and informed properly about guns don't misuse firearms. For people that want to own and carry a gun they have to earn it. But of course there are easier ways to get a gun off the streets. That's why we pay the cops.
In my opinion the best way to have avoided this situation was to have a better communication or alarm for the campus. I don't agree for evacutations. That makes the students sitting ducks.
Can't blame it on mental cause even sane people have mental moments.
How do you legislate sanity? Can a gun ban prevent tragedy? With all the unregistered firearms in the U. S. today any legislation to limit gun violence is merely an exercise in futility. That said there is no real effective argument for allowing a less restrictive statute for gun permits either.
There are some who feel that arming teachers could have prevented, or at least limited, the amount of bloodshed. This noble thought does not take into account that when police arrive on the scene they will no longer be faced with one gunman, but potentially dozens. If there is a report of a shooting, how would they determine the citizens and from the suspects?
We’ll probably spend several days dissecting this incident and placing blame. Ideas for better security will be bantered about. Fanatics on both sides of the gun issue will posture. Officials will be asked to justify their actions. Questions will be raised as to why no one could foresee this tragedy beforehand.
The simple answer is this; Cho Seung-Hui is at fault and no one else. We would be better served concentrating on the victims than trying to show who is to blame.
B said
when will people realize that guns single shot rapid fire or anyother type of gun,does not kill people. People kill people. example I can leave my gun on the table and it WILL NOT LEAVE MY TABLE AND GO OUT ON ITS OWN AND KILL SOMEONE.
As a gun owner I appreciate the freedom we enjoy in this country. I can accept certain restrictions on ownership...there are some weapons that only the military or police forces should have. Every so often, the American Association of Chiefs of Police has issued a list of weapons they'd rather not see in the public inventory. I'm willing to defer to such an organization's suggestion as to what should be available for public ownership.
This travesty at VT is more a failure in the delivery of public mental health care than it is a firearm issue. Since the 1980s the trend in most states has been to close state run mental hospitals, prescribe medications for those who we would have once hospitalized, and hope for them to participate in follow-up care. That troubled young man needed much more time removed from society than he was given.
Our boys go over to Iraq and get killed, that is labeled as "the price of freedom". Why would you not consider the loss of the 32 lives at VA Tech as "the price of freedom"?
Gun-free zones (school campuses, etc.) are dangerous places. They are a micro-slice of what the anti-gun coalition would like the country to be. In these zones, only the criminals would possess firearms and the law abiding public would be rendered defenseless and unable to provide a deterrence in such an environment.
Don’t ban guns, ban “political correctness” that prevents watchful and worried students
from informing school authorities about behavior of “different” students because it will offend someone. This is further aggravated by the school authority’s reluctance to pursue
these observations because of the same “political correctness” disease that has paralyzed
this country and made lawyers rich.
I hear very little about high crime or death rates in Great Britain. Of course, their gun laws do not meet American standards. I suppose that we prefer to offset adequate police forces by being strapped with our own pistols and revolvers. A good example is that Jesse James was a criminal taken down by a criminal friend.
Here's an interesting, and somewhat ironic article from Investors Business Daily
Unarmed And Dangerous
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, April 19, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Gun Control: Five years ago, armed college students subdued a gunman embarking on a college killing spree. Last year, Virginia Tech applauded the fact that its students couldn't do the same.
On Jan. 16, 2002 , a killer stalked the campus of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va., not far from the site of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. A disgruntled former student killed Law Dean L. Anthony Sutin, associate professor Thomas Blackwell and a student.
Two of the three law students who overpowered Peter Odighizuwa before he could kill more innocent victims were armed. Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges, seeing the killing spree begin, went to their cars, retrieved their guns and used them to disarm the shooter.
As John Lott Jr. tells it in his book, "The Bias Against Guns" (Regnery, 2003), while most were fleeing the gunman, "Mikael and Tracy were prepared to do something quite different: Both immediately ran to their cars and got their guns. Mikael had to run about one hundred yards to get to his car."
Lott continues: "Along with Ted Besen (who was unarmed), they approached Peter from different sides. As Tracy explains it, "I stopped at my vehicle and got a handgun, a revolver. Ted went toward Peter, and I aimed the gun at (Peter), and Peter tossed his gun down." Then the three jumped on the gunman and the killing stopped.
Bernard Goldberg, in his book "Arrogance" (Warner, 2003), reports how the media reported the tragic events of that day. He notes that Lott did a LexisNexis search and found that only four of 208 news reports mentioned the rescuers had guns. James Eaves-Johnson did his own LexisNexis search for the Daily Iowan (University of Iowa) and found that only two of 88 stories mentioned that armed students subdued the killer and prevented more deaths.
Similarly, few media outlets have mentioned that, in the right-to-carry state of Virginia — whose freshman senator, James Webb, packs heat, and whose aide was caught carrying that gun in a bag onto Senate grounds — the Virginia Tech campus was a gun-free zone. At least for the prey, if not the predators. And Virginia Tech officials wanted it that way.
Last year, House Bill 1572 died in the Virginia General Assembly, failing to even get out of the Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. The legislation was designed, as the Roanoke Times reported, to prohibit public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit . . . from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."
On hearing of the bill's defeat, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on campus." And predators like Cho Seung-Hui.
One wonders if Cho Seung-Hui would have even walked on campus with a gun if he knew his victims were able to defend themselves. Or how the story would have been different had Prof. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who lost his life barricading a classroom door so his students could escape, had been able to fire back.
Guns don't kill people human behavior kills others and individuals. Here in a two week period one young man kills 33 including himself. Also, the wife of a minister is convicted of voluntary manslaughter for shooting her husband in the back with a shotgun due to physical and phychological abuse. Finally a local lady kills her separated husband who was attacking her according to the police force's evidence. More time and money needs to be spent on correcting mental illness and drug/alcohol addiction and less on gun control.
George Washington University had a person behaving like Cho and suspended him to ensure the safety of the community. Some trial lawyer took a hold of this and sued the university. GWU was forced to pay because mental health disorders are protected conditions under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Everybody’s saying VA Tech should have done something to prevent the massacre. But anything they could have done would have been against the law.
We are a free and open society and some people take advantage of that.
Gun rights people are right. All students and professors should carry guns and when a shooter appears on campus, they can take out their guns and shoot in his direction. Of course, the croiss firing will kill other innocent people and police will then kill everyone who is shooting. This will happen in all colleges, all the malls and workplaces and there will be more deaths than in the civil war. This may be a good way to get rid of all the gun nuts. Or we could do what the west done to stop the killings and make people turn in their gun before entering the town or city. This is how the west became a safe place to live,
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home