Now that another psycho has flipped out and killed a bunch of people, there is a predictable groundswell of emotion with people blaming everything they can think of — from guns, to society itself, to video games, to a failure to have made the child victims pray — everything and the kitchen sink with the guy who actually did it being barely an afterthought. Adam Lanza is all but irrelevant right now. Because that miserable excuse for a human being was mentally ill and is now dead, blaming him will not satisfy the public need to “do something.” Or to take, as Obama put it, “meaningful action.”
What action might that be? I don’t know exactly, but liberals are already expressing the hope that the latest incident may represent a “tipping point” in the gun control debate. Those who support the Second Amendment need to be extra vigilant right now.
I think Clayton Cramer has raised an excellent question which for some reason seems to be lost amid the usual hysteria.
I keep wondering how long it is going to take before Americans notice that the common factor in nearly all these mass murders is mental illness.
I wonder too. Instead, the focus is on the guns, instead of the psychotic people who wander pathetically about until finally they do something awful. Only, when they do something awful with guns, the gun grabbers turn right around and demand that guns be taken away from the wrong people.
Glenn Reynolds quoted William S. Burroughs on the subject:
“After a shooting spree,” author William Burroughs once said, “they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” Burroughs continued: “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
Plenty of people — especially among America’s political and journalistic classes — feel differently. They’d be much more comfortable seeing ordinary Americans disarmed. And whenever there is a mass shooting, or other gun incident that snags the headlines, they do their best to exploit the tragedy and push for laws that would, well, take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
Taking away guns from sane and normal people because another psycho went on a shooting spree makes about as much sense as taking away matches, gasoline, and cigarette lighters because a pyromaniac went on a fatal fire-setting spree.
The problem is that they just want gun control. Making sense has nothing to do with it.
Comments
4 responses to “It’s too easy for pyromaniacs to get matches!”
Indeed. I’ve made that same point with 5 otherwise sane people today. Hoping I got through to at least 3 of them (hey, that’s a majority)….
Also tried making the point that if the teachers had been armed…that went over like a lead balloon. Sigh. Oh, all 5 admitted that they thought I was right – but they “just didn’t like” the idea. Erm, excuse me? If you understand that it works, but you don’t like it for some weird reason, maybe you should reconsider???
We’re doomed.
Kathy, you might ask them to try this thought experiment:
http://www.volokh.com/2012/12/14/a-thought-experiment-related-to-school-shootings/
That is, assuming they can experiment with thought….
[…] it is known. Eric points out by quoting Clayton Cramer that there is a common thread in many of the recent mass murder episodes. […]
Clayton Cramer is like a clock, right at least twice a day, and by accident. I would have expected him to condemn these atrocities on moral grounds. No excuses. No liberal pandering to mental illness. But instead he finds a reason to let the little monster off. Could it be because the mother was a right wing prepper?
As to the Burroughs quote, it would have a little more force to it had it not been uttered by a man who killed his wife playing a game of William Tell, and then fled Mexico to get a reduced sentence in this country. Always nice getting a lecture from a heroin addict who killed his wife with a gun about who should and shouldn’t be allowed weapons.
I agree with the sentiments of both these people, but wish someone, anyone, else had made them.