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Just maybe some are waking up
bpost
Member Posts: 32,664 ✭✭✭✭
Since I travel a lot and have XM I can tune into many talk shows. The overwhelming theme today was that if there was not the PC rule about no guns on campus the law of averages says that at least one person in that building would have had a CCW and been armed.
The dim bulb of realization is starting to glow in some of the masses. Folks for years thought taking guns away was the solution. The Elite sold them that guns caused crime. Criminals were not responsible because of a litany of excuses.
Now with CCW being the law of MOST of the land people see that the anti-gun screamers predictions of death in the streets was pure unadulterated BS. Crime has dropped in CCW areas while continuing to rise in the areas you would expect it to go up; areas with heavy gun laws.
Some formerly anti-gun people now see the light. A law abiding citizen with a gun may have been able to stop the killer in his tracks. a law abiding citizen being next to you in the bank/store/car dealer/ TV shop is absolutely no threat to you at all. As a matter of fact that unassuming common man or woman might just save your butt from the next whackball; tragedies like this are sure to happen again.
The dim bulb of realization is starting to glow in some of the masses. Folks for years thought taking guns away was the solution. The Elite sold them that guns caused crime. Criminals were not responsible because of a litany of excuses.
Now with CCW being the law of MOST of the land people see that the anti-gun screamers predictions of death in the streets was pure unadulterated BS. Crime has dropped in CCW areas while continuing to rise in the areas you would expect it to go up; areas with heavy gun laws.
Some formerly anti-gun people now see the light. A law abiding citizen with a gun may have been able to stop the killer in his tracks. a law abiding citizen being next to you in the bank/store/car dealer/ TV shop is absolutely no threat to you at all. As a matter of fact that unassuming common man or woman might just save your butt from the next whackball; tragedies like this are sure to happen again.
Comments
U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre
By PAISLEY DODDS
LONDON - The Virginia Tech shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia - one of America's closest allies - declared that America's gun culture was costing lives.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday's shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
While some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.
"We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.
The tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia's gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.
Handguns are also banned in Britain - a prohibition that forces even the country's Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.
Still, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday's victims.
Editorials were less diplomatic.
"Only the names change - And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"
The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image.
"It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"
Police started identifying the victims Tuesday. One was a Peruvian student identified as Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, according to his mother Betty Cuevas, who said her son was studying international relations.
Professors from India, Israel and Canada also were killed.
Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said. His father, a Holocaust survivor, immigrated to Israel from Romania, and was on sabbatical in Virginia.
Indian-born G.V. Loganathan, 51, a lecturer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was also among the dead, his brother G.V. Palanivel told Indian media.
"We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do," Palanivel said.
Canadian Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, a French instructor, also died in the shootings, said her husband Jerzy Nowak, head of the university's horticulture department. "We're mourning," Nowak said.
The killings also hit a nerve for Virginia Tech alumni abroad.
"I think if this does prompt a serious and reflective debate on gun issues and gun law in the States, then some good may come from this woeful tragedy," said British Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, who graduated in 1982.
Britain's 46 homicides involving firearms last year was the lowest since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded 590 homicides last year.
"If the guns are harder to get a hold of, fewer people will do it," said Michael Dent, a 65-year-old construction worker in London. "You can't walk up to a supermarket or shop and buy a gun like in the States."
But even in Germany, where gun-control laws are strict, a teenager in 2002 shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer at a high school. The shooter was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.
"The instant I saw the pictures and heard the commentary, it immediately brought back our own experience," Gutenberg high school director Christiane Alt said of the Virginia Tech killings.
The Swedish daily Goteborgs-Posten said without access to weapons, the killings at Virginia Tech may have been prevented.
"What exactly triggered the massacre in Virginia is unclear, but the fundamental reason is often the perpetrator's psychological problems in combination with access to weapons," it wrote.
The shootings drew intense media coverage in China, in part because the school has a large Chinese student body.
"This incident reflects the problem of gun control in America," Yuan Peng, an American studies expert in China, was quoted as saying by state-run China Daily.
Only 7 percent of the more than 26,000 students at Virginia Tech are foreign, according to the school Web site. But Chinese make up nearly a third of that.
In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a "valid" reason.
Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera's main story on the shootings was an opinion piece entitled "Guns at the Supermarket" - a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased. State-run RAI radio also discussed at length what it said were lax standards for gun ownership in the United States.
"The latest attack on a U.S. campus will shake up America, maybe it will provoke more vigorous reactions than in the past, but it won't change the culture of a country that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which considers the right of having guns inalienable," Corriere wrote in its front-page story.
Several Italian graduate students at Virginia Tech recounted how they barricaded themselves inside a geology department building not far from the scene of the shooting.
In Mexico, radio commentators criticized the availability of firearms in the U.S. Others renewed Mexico's complaint that most guns in Mexico are smuggled in from the United States.
The killings led newspapers' front pages, with Mexico City's Dario Monitor reporting: "Terror returns to the U.S.: 32 assassinated on university campus." The tabloid Metro compared Mexico's death toll Monday from drug violence to the number of people killed at Virginia Tech, in a front-page headline that read: "U.S. 33, Mexico 20."
___
Associated Press Writers Charles Hutzler, Alexandru Alexe, Raphael Satter, Robert Barr, Karl Ritter, Nicole Winfield, Gavin Rabinowitz, Alex Braun, Courtney French and Traci Carl contributed to this report.
What are these teachers doing? Going over the papers and saying, "Oh thats interesting but we need more details on how the killer's mind works." This just pisses me off! I have a brother in collage that has teachers that would write this on a paper!
Also what is interesting is how most people thought that he might be likely to do a school shooting. Umm.. is it just me or when I see a fire hazard likely to happen I do something about it? I am 24 years old, and when I was in high school there were some people that were worried that I would pull something like that just because I would read "Guns and Ammo" and other mags and books before class. My statement to them is that the kids that do this have no respect for what a gun is and what it can do.
Here's the poll.
It seems the USA is 24th in the world for violent crimes. We also have MORE GUNS THAN PEOPLE. We need more guns, some must be getting old. We are all painfully aware that big cities; havens of anti-gun laws and people, have the highest crime rates. It is absolute staticical fact that we can reduce gun murders by 60% if we disarm blacks and Mexicans living in cities over 50,000. That is a topic you won't see on CBS news at 6:00.
Mike, on his show today he said he had listened to Air America just to get a headache. They think they (liberals) are smarter than we mere citizens. The BS they used was waiting periods.....One gun Choe used was bought over a month ago. Another was bought over two months ago. Air America attacks we gun owners and the cops for this happening.
Any Liberals who justify their anti-gun stance by saying they "just want one more law to make us all safer" are either really ignorant of the true anti-gun agenda or they are blowing smoke directly up your *.
As we have seen in this massacre, a waiting period wouldn't have helped, the AWB wouldn't have helped, I haven't heard if this guy was using hi-cap mags but I don't think that would have made a difference either. Carrying ten 15-round mags or fifteen 10-round mags probably didn't matter to him. If he had not been able to buy handguns then he probably would have bought a rifle or shotgun. If he couldn't have bought anything then he probably would have stolen them.
The only thing that is particular to this case that I feel was flawed, as far as him purchasing the firearms, is that he WAS NOT A U.S. CITIZEN. I feel that this should have disqualified him from purchasing a firearm in this county. However, my feeling is not grounded in the fact that he massacred 32 people, I simply feel it is a bad idea in general for us to have armed foreign nationals in our country.
JMHO,
WoundedWolf
I have a CCW and carry every where I go, unless there is a metal detector. My tiny Seecamp 32 with Silvertips is undetectable, even wearing shorts. I guarantee you I would have stopped that nut before he killed 32 people.
My best friend, a Federal Agent, also carries 24/7 even if there are metal detectors. He was in a convenience store when a bro pulled his heat on the clerk. The last sound he heard, when the round hit his right ear, was the sound of his brains going out the left ear. I was in that store a year later, there have been no more armed robberies.
Remember him ?