Virginia Tech Thoughts, part 1
The shooting at Virginia Tech was a reprehensible event. It doesn't make sense for someone to go in and kill as many strangers as possible, so our view of the world is throw into confusion. If people died there for no reason what is to say that won't happen here today or next week or a year from now? Introducing that sort of uncertainty into our
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I agree wholeheartedly with you that responsibility is needed. Everybody needs a dad who's more like a drill sergeant smacking firearm responsibility into their heads. But even without that, I don't think enough credit is given to the common man. It would take a lot to make someone (who was sane and clean enough to get a permit from the PD) pull a pistol on someone else, I think - you would have to feel quite threatened. It's legal to carry it with the appropriate permits, but bear in mind that even waving it around or pointing it at people comes with very stiff penalties. It always seems to me like the pseudointellectual elite believes that allowing the unwashed masses to carry guns is like giving them to monkeys - we'll all be shooting each other and ourselves on a daily basis.
I like how people seem to commonly believe that if a few people had guns in these classrooms that they would have been more of a threat to other students. Well, they would have had to kill 30 other students by accident before they caught up to the death toll wreaked by the lone predator in the sheep pen.
That said, I still don't think that a school is an appropriate place for firearms, so neither side of the argument is realistic. I do believe one way or the other that stripping freedoms during a time of panic and crisis is the worst possible thing that can be done (ref: Patriot Act).
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I agree that on that day if other students were armed that they would likely be more of a threat to the shooter then other students. But my concern is that the other 364 days of the year they would be more of a threat to one another. Not saying that the "unwashed masses" would shoot one another like crazy, but it would increase the potential for bad things to happen even if just by accident.
I realize that there is a trade-off of safety for liberty in there, but I don't know where the break even point is. Or if there even is one. That said, I agree that the current laws seem to be mostly acceptable. Even though the shooter seemed to have purchased the weapons legally, I'm not sure what could have been done differently to avoid the event, with respect to a change in the law.
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