My two cents

[eumelia]

The news and blogosphere are awash with commentary about the Virginia Tech Massacre.

I'm not really sure what there is to add to what's been going on, it's a shame... in the true sense of the word, there will be reports by the police, pundits are giving their opinions, whether properly based or not and the blog is agog with commentary from all over the world.

The man was armed to the hilt with automatic and semi-automatic firearms. I have to ask? Dude, WTF?!
I understand the American Second Amendment and I understand the feeling of "needing" a gun, I also understand the rush of using a gun, I personally felt very powerful after firing my M-16, but was happy to return it to where it belongs in the armory.
But an M-16 is an assault rifle used in the Military... what would you need an assault rifle for when you're Suburbia, or even the Country, surely a regular pistol would suffice. And a shotgun, which to my limited understanding is used for hunting (?), what do you need one of those for in the city.

He had so many guns, so many deadly weapons and they were not used for protection and hunting, they were used for mindless killing.

In actuality, this student didn't need guns to commit this act of violence, all they did was give him wider scope, if he hadn't been able to acquire firearms he probably would have just commited suicide.

Shame gun laws in the Common Wealth if Virginia are so lax.

May all those lost rest in peace and all those who survived keep going strong.

Comments

[thecityofdis.livejournal.com]

Firstly, in the shooting he used two semi-automatic handheld pistols, and a whole lot of ammo. He did not use an assault rifle or a shotgun or an AK-47.

Secondly, as a Greencard-carrying resident, he is eligible to obtain firearms, and did so legally. With no prior convictions, he made it through the background checks scot-free.

I'm not defending him in any measure. But making guns harder for actual, innocent people to obtain is not the answer. The answer is trying to figure out what it is in our society that drives people to this kind of fucked-up madness. And stopping it. The gun is not the actor of violence, and it never has been. It's the person behind it.

Also, there is well-documented, solid evidence that lax (but of course, reasonable) gun laws prevent gun-related crime at astronomical levels. Florida, in which just about everyone and their mother can obtain a gun license (in fact, my 52 year-old mother just got her CCW this year), has the lowest rate of gun-related crime in the US.

And after the United Kingdom outlawed guns, incidences of stabbings, armed robberies, and all sorts of other good stuff all skyrocketed. It's a fact of life that you can't keep firearms on a college campus, so this isn't the perfect framework for a pro-gun argument, but ideally in the real world, allowing a person to option to own a weapon in their defense would deter crimes like these.

Schools, where this doesn't hold true, are sadly the recipient of a disproportionate amount of this kind of violence.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I agree that making guns harder to obtain isn't the answer, but I also think that wanting so many guns is suspect.

Look, I only have my own experience to fall back on, I'm not American, nor have I ever been in the presence of a gun that wasn't wearing it for professional reasons (military, security, etc.) and have used a gun I can tell you, it's one of the easier tools one can learn to use.
But I hear about things like Gun shows and see people at NRA rallies cheering the gun (a deadly weapon!) and it seems that, in the US as least, people are a little too trigger happy.

Not that Israel is that much better, but I just don't hear about gun related murders that often here, unlike in the States.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting or owning a gun, but I don't think people need more than one!

[hakuzo.livejournal.com]

I think every citizen should own a gun. If we are worried about terrorists coming through our borders, we should not be selling foreigners guns. JMHO.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

incidences of stabbings, armed robberies, and all sorts of other good stuff all skyrocketed

Actually I'd disagree with that quite strongly. Gun crime was rare here in the UK, and it is still rare. But I don't think there was a significant raise in violent crime when guns were outlawed.

Outlawing guns in the UK was an unqualified success. But we could do it here, because we never had high levels of private gun ownership. It couldn't be done in the States.

[hakuzo.livejournal.com]

Many americans keep a shotgun for home defense.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Is a shotgun more effective than a regular handgun?

[hakuzo.livejournal.com]

Any rifle is more effective really. The police use them here when they are out-gunned (they have special ones), and our SWAT teams have them.

The nice thing about them from a police/military point of view is that you can have a variety of shot. The shotgun shoots a shell which can be loaded with BB's, rock salt, nets, plastic slugs, you name it.

From an outlaw's perspective, you can saw off the barrel, which gives you the blast behind a rifle, yet you also have concealability and can fire in close quarters.

[hakuzo.livejournal.com]

I should probably mention too, that when the barrel is sawed off, and the shell is loaded with fragmentary ammo, it's called a scattergun. This is highly illegal, but people have done this since the old west days. The range of the weapon goes down to only about 30' - 60', but you can spray a very wide area (a whole room or a whole street) with a scattergun.

Also, the shotgun is quintessentially American, and is just as American as the six shooter.