Whats with the knee-jerk responces?
mitch @ 1:03 pm on April 17, 2007
- UPDATED - April 17th 3:41pm - it appears that the shooter did purchase the 9mm through a gun shop. However, I have also found some of the short 1 act plays that the shooter had written. While some may claim that they’re sick and twisted. I would rather argue that they’re are quite immature for the age. The story as its written seems much more junior high to me. Tho, possibly some type of insite into his own persona… Thinking he definitely needed some type of psychiatric care.
As, most of you have undoubtedly heard, there has been an awful tragedy at Virgina Tech, and my heart goes out to the families of the victims.
Those feelings aside… I’m again, infuriated by the responses people have been giving with regard to the situation. Saying that VT “should have locked down the school and notified students of the situation”. Is the scale of this type of claim really that far above and beyond peoples comprehension? The sheer logistics of such a feat are mind boggling. To say that after what appeared to be an isolated incident in the first shooting with no information or evidence leading anyone to believe there would be another shooting 2 hours later, they should have locked down the whole school!?!? And that they should have warned everyone? Again… if this was say Manhattan, I don’t think anyone would be able to walk on city streets… EVER. If they had to follow the same guidelines… A normal High School, is entirely different as its usually very controlled with one large building and maybe a few smaller ones just around the perimeter and usually less than 10 buildings total, and <5,000 students. This was an open College campus with a mix of residential and commercial intermixed to boot. With over 40,000 students alone. Its would be kind of hard to lock down over 700 buildings!
Why is it that when a tragedy strikes… we want to pawn off the responsibility of it onto “things” and “entities” instead of the person/people that committed the acts? I hear the cult of Scientology is saying that the shooter was probably over medicated on anti-depressants, as they had also “discovered” that is what caused Columbine. Yeah… you read that right… Or, VT didn’t do enough to warn people, or they didn’t shut down the campus… This is all BS… honestly. Don’t get me started on Gun control, as it had nothing to do with it.
I’ve seen reports that the serial numbers were filed off of the guns…. why would the shooter, prior to doing what he did, file off the serial numbers to his guns? Quick answer is he wouldn’t.. why bother, he went in knowing he was probably going to die. By his own hand or the police or someone else with a gun, I’m pretty sure he knew he wouldn’t come out of it alive(Also, none of the other tragedies have ever had filed off serial numbers). So again, why were these ones filed off? The simple answer was that is the way they were when he got them. Which also means he did not obtain them legally. So more strict gun laws WOULD NOT HAVE PREVENTED THIS FROM HAPPENING. Its been said many times, but I still think it needs repeating: The only thing stricter gun laws do, is prevent lawful citizens from obtaining guns. Making guns illegal will mean only criminals will have guns. If anything, we should be encouraging more lawful citizens to carry guns.
Which leads to the latest whipping boy… Video Games. Jack Thompson was very quick to exploit this tragedy for his own agenda against the Video Game Industry. My argument is the same as I’ve written about before. Look at the statistics… Look at the TENS of MILLIONS of gamers in the US alone. Then look at the numbers of these types of incidents(I’m not trying to discount them, just trying to bring a little perspective with regards to gamers)…. If Video Games were training our youth and even those that have aged into their mid 30’s now… we are looking at MUCH less than 1% of possible gamers.
I don’t buy it, any of it. Why the media allow the lunatics to spread their own propaganda without ANY evidence what-so-ever is beyond me. As bad as that is… People believe it… I don’t know which is worse… more and more, The movie Idiocracy becomes more and more ironic… Which seems to be leading us more towards that of V for Vendetta. The police state everyone seems to think is a great idea, in order to feel “safe”.
I believe it was Ben Franklin (on of our founding fathers) that said:
He that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety, deserves neither.
Life —
