You see, I'm Canadian, so the (a) option has never registered with my brain for anyone to need (note the word "need" not "want") a gun. It's just a cultural difference there. I just think that this murderer would have done less damage had he only had access to a knife or baseball bat. I was a big time hunter when I was in high school. I hunted rabbits, deer and of course, moose. I made it point to use only a single shot weapon, as I personally thought that if I didn't hit the animal the first time, I didn't deserve it. So, I never got the whole for semi-autos for hunting thing. This is just my take, and I know we all have our own. The whole thing just makes no sense what so ever.
I'm a gamer at heart, so it absolutely infuriates me to hear King Asshat and now Dr.Phil (W...T...F!!!). We as gamers know that millions of people play video games. We as gamers also know that if there was any correlation between school shootings and video games, we'd have a bigger problem on our hands than we do now. I get angry enough when a guy like this thinks he had the right to take other peoples lives because he can't deal. It gets me even angrier when lawyers, politicians, TV show hosts and "news" reporters use a high impact event like this to push their own careers along. We've got real families suffering here and these talking heads can't get their heads out of their ass.
As for part (c), well, it's closely linked to King Asshat because thats the drum he likes to beat...repeatedly.
As a father of two little girls, this thing absolutely scares the shit out of me. We haven't had that many of these school shootings up here, but we have had them. Part of me never wants to let my 6 year old go to school again. Part of me just wants to say, "ok, everyone hand in the guns now...enough is enough". Part of me wishes that kid didn't kill himself so that he could truly understand what the moms and dads of those kids are feeling. But, hey, I really can't have any of that...realistically anyway.
D out.
P.S Sorry to law abiding gun owners.
P.S.S I'm not sorry to King Asshat...you truly are a D bag.
P.S.S.S Rush as the voice of common sense...amazing and bravo.
CALLER: What I really think is an issue is video violence, video gaming. I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer, and when people are living that kind of lifestyle -- and college students do this a lot.
RUSH: (sigh) Let's say you're right. Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that. We can find all kinds of societal problems and ills, but the fact of the matter is that whatever you would look at as a bad influence -- video games as you mentioned -- it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers.
I know it's natural that everybody wants to throw their theories into this, and perhaps come up with perhaps a unique explanation or to understand, and I think it's natural, because people have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?
If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, weeeeell, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that's the same tack that's taken with guns. You got one guy who used a gun that's it. You're falling prey to the same way the Drive-Bys propagandize, and that's, "Well, we need gun control! We gotta get guns out of the hands of people."
So you gotta be real careful here not to paint with broad brushes on these things. You gotta be very careful not to plug this into your own individual political prism, because then you become no different than what the Drive-Bys are doing. If you just wait, eventually we'll find out more than we want to know about this guy, and you're going to have to listen to what's reported about this guy with keen ears, and you're going to have to read with sharp eyes out there, because the Drive-Bys are going to report about this guy in ways that will advance their political agenda because that's what this story is to them.
3 comments:
If guns were illegal, he wouldn'tve been limited to a 'knife or baseball bat' because criminals and people determined on violence can easily get their hands on anything that's illegal if they want to.
Drugs, for example, are one of those things that are illegal and yet, anyone who wants them knows where to get them easily. Making laws isn't going to solve the problem, its a social problem, and a problem of crazy people not getting treatment or even being taken seriously until its too late.
The Virginia Tech shooter had a history of complaints against him, mental health diagnoses, etc. Yet he was allowed to go free and eventually, he used that freedom to act out his sick fantasies. Guns were the tool he used, but the real fault is the system that would rather not be bothered with sick individuals until they'vegone out and physically harmed people (and its too late). Then they blame legal guns and video games.
Blaming both are just a copout and avoiding the real issues.
You are, or course, completely right anonymous.
...and thanks for bringing up the mental health aspect of the issue. I completely forgot to write something about that angle of the story.
I don't necessarily blame guns for this whole thing...I just really don't understand why we really need them, thats all.
Sometime in the early 1990s, Comedian Bill Hicks said this regarding the insane difference between gun related deaths in the USA and the UK:
"England, where no one has guns; fourteen deaths. United States -- and I think you know how we feel about guns -- 23,000 deaths from handguns. But there's no connection, and you'd be a fool and a communist to make one."
Needless to say, Bill was being sarcastic.
The other hand, the fact that we have guns in the USA, coupled with our aggressive "not in my backyard attitude" ensures that there will never ever be a ground war in the United States and any country that brings one here will be quickly mailed home in series of boxes.
So, there's two sides to everything I guess. I don't even know how I feel about it.
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