Monday, April 16, 2007

In The Wrong Hands

I'm sure by now you have heard about the Virginia Tech shootings. So of course we have the usual:

"We live in a society where guns are pretty well accepted," said Jim Sollo, of Virginians Against Handgun Violence. "There are 200 million guns in this society and obviously some in the wrong hands."
Actually what this shooting proves is that there were not enough guns in the right hands.

The Virginia Legislature had an opportunity to fix the problem of not enough guns in the right hands and declined. This could be the opportunity many politicians look for. A chance to change their minds.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

5 comments:

Eyes said...

TRUE, and there lots of guns pre-80's and this wasn't happening.

Anonymous said...

Yes because lets all fight guns with guns, and fire with fire! Why didn't we think of that before!

Anonymous said...

Um, Eyes, from what I've been reading the two worst shootings were pre-80's.

I've kinda wondered about this and I think one unintended consequence that at least needs to be heavily considered before we go about passing laws greatly increasing the amount of guns around is whether that might actually cause more people to die.

The worse case senario as I see it is that someone determined to shoot up a place goes in and starts blasting away. A couple of people who don't have law enforcement or miltary training think they have the right person and open fire on what is actually the wrong person.

Nick

M. Simon said...

It seems to mee the risks are less with 90 unarmed people and 10 good guys armed against one bad guy vs 100 unarmed unarmed person against the bad guy.

By definition the armed bads guy is not going to obey the law.

In this case even two or three tragic mistakes would have been acceptable had it reduced the number dead from 30 to 10.

linearthinker said...

Nick,
Your worst case scenario doesn't hold up to real world scrutiny. In the first place, you don't need to "have law enforcement or military training" to be effective. You basically need to know how to shoot straight and have the will and resolve to do the right thing when the chips are down.

The death toll as I write is up to 33. Ask the families and friends of those who fell what their opinion is regarding the issue at hand.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ