This afternoon in Oregon, some nitwit feeling disempowered or some damn stupid thing decided to punch back -- at random (or nearly random) strangers, who undoubtedly wished him no ill.
Hey, dammit, I'm real sorry most people don't notice you, but the fact is, most people don't notice very many others, not in any deeply meaningful way and that is how it works and always has.
People were killed, people were hurt and that is just plain wrong, period. It shouldn't happen. The shooter is dead -- much too late.
Naturally the President got on TV to chide the American public and (indirectly, oh, how softly, softly) the NRA. He somehow did not chide the mental health provisions Affordable Care Act, the friends and neighbors of the shooter, or college policies that ensured no law-abiding person was going to be able to shoot back. Nor did he mention, let alone condemn, the possible four ch@n* connection. I'd say, "Funny, that," except it's not.
As if to demonstrate how deeply he doesn't get it, the President mentioned the nearly 1:1 correspondence between the number of guns known to be in private hands in the U.S. and the population, and then praised gun-seizure efforts in the United Kingdom and Australia as admirable models, countries with smaller population and an enormously smaller number of privately-owned guns per capita. Politics, feeling and personal opinion aside, it's not practical to grab 'em all, even if there was no resistance, avoidance and political pushback, all of which there most definitely would be.
There's a political fight ahead and it's not going to be pretty. Meanwhile, the UK is "enjoying" a rising tide of crime, most of it not committed with guns (which must be a real comfort to those beaten to death, or half to death for that matter), while public safety officials and politicians are trying to get people to turn in their knives. Learn to shoot back, or make yourself an even more attractive target? It's decision time.
________________________
* Some things, you don't spell right. Ever. I was really hoping this might be a case of Sudden Jihadi Syndrome but present and very preliminary indications are it's another instance of Spoiled Beta Male. Makes me want to puke. Little weasels are just the mirror-image of metrosexuals, only without the grooming or brittle Peter Pan charm.
I was doing my best to ignore this, but your voice affects me, as it often does.
ReplyDeleteYet *again*, a 'gun-free zone... Isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe very tools necessary to stop the slaughter are denied the very people most needing their presence, not in minutes, but *now*.
There was *one* campus security person there, unarmed.
Why? Because guns are bad.
I am enraged, sickened, and a whole lotta other very negative emotions.
The futility (and quite frankly, sheer madness) of Gun! Free! Zones! must be ended.
I'm really getting tired of this sh*t.
Yeah. One of the things I try to discuss with the gun control crowd is the sheer number of firearms in the US. I'm trying to convince them that the genie is out of this bottle, and there is no 'get the guns off the street'. All...ALL additional gun laws will do is make stuff tougher on those of us who follow the law.
ReplyDeleteCourse, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but...
It seems to me -- and perhaps I'm wrong -- that eventually the law-abiding gun owners in this country are going to say to hell with the law, we're carrying regardless.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Commander Zero goes, every time he opens his mouth on this subject I just quote Glenn Reynolds: "When people say things like 'don’t let this moment pass without acting on gun control,' what they’re really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren’t thinking clearly.
Sorry, should be a close quote on that last sentence. Too much blood in my caffeine stream.
ReplyDelete"Spoiled Beta Male"...perfect. I'm stealing it.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think even his mother said that he was insane/crazy/whatever.
ReplyDeleteFor some insight into that problem, see Clayton Cramer's book, "My Brother Ron". It's very good.
I wasn't thinking of a letter quite that high up in the Greek Alphabet.
ReplyDelete