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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Boing Boing gets it right.
Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing has the most accurate take on the whole VA Tech situation. He posted this reply which, though from after 9/11, is still timely.
Of course the World Trade Center bombings [insert VA Tech here] are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened. I have not seen a single argument put forward that would have actually prevented this. Instead everything from video games, to handgun registration, to making illegal weapons purchases harder, to Muslims, to evolution, to violence on TV has been blamed. The sad fact is he did this with a legally-purchased firearm. If handguns had been illegal, he still could have done this with a shotgun or rifle. Firearms bans are not a realistic political goal in this country anyway, and there are already too many guns distributed around to country to get the shit back in the horse. And as far as Islam, video games, and violent TV, we might as well blame the kid's basketball hobby. People need to cram whatever rational explanation they can into an irrational event. Sometimes there's no good explanation, and no good solution. Update - I like Amanda's take at Pandagon, and it's less snarky than mine. Labels: general discussion |
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15 Comments:
If handguns had been illegal, he still could have done this with a shotgun or rifle.
Or a cleaver. Or a baseball bat. But with a shotgun or a rifle or a cleaver or a bat he would have been slower. And in being slower, he would have killed fewer people. Ever fired a rifle? It takes about a second and a half to get another bullet in the chamber. I would hope that those moments would provide brave heroes a moment to try to tackle this guy. I dunno.
I think it's interesting that American's frame the debate as pro- and anti- gun control. But that's not really it. Almost everyone sane agrees there should be gun control (you can't buy Light Anti-tank Weapons for example). And certainly I've never heard anyone argue that the 2nd Amendment provides the right to buy howitzers. We're all in agreement that gun control should exist, the disagreement lies in which guns should be controlled. (I tend to think rifles and shotguns should require licensing, handguns should be for police, and semi- and automatic weapons should be military only). What about you?
I agree that random wacko events should not guide national policy. But one could use horrendous events to allow a conversation to take place.
April 18, 2007 11:22 AM,
Yeah, practically speaking, Virginia's ubiquitous gun culture contributed to the severity of the attack. I've never been a fan of the argument that because a certain public policy can be circumvented, it will. See the DRM debate--the whole key there is just to slow people down rather than make it impossible to copy media, and that's usually enough.
Here at UC, I don't even know where to get a gun! We'd have to kill each other with our smugness.
April 18, 2007 11:31 AM,
A semi-automatic rifle would not have been slower, and those are rarely discussed as a target of a ban (unless they have physical traits which make them look more dangerous). Or he could do what that guy in New York did last year and blow up his building from the boiler room to spite his wife (that amazingly killed no one but him - right?)
Either way, these events are more about people taking out the axes they've been grinding over the years and start swinging that about ways to really prevent spree-killing which I think is impossible.
Handgun control seems sensible to me, they are weapons which pretty much exist solely to shoot other humans.
More importantly I have a country/city view of gun control which is very different from most people. Much of the resistance to gun control comes from the rural folks who are about 30 minutes away from emergency response, and dammit if guns don't make them feel safer. You suggest disarming them, and they'll start a civil war.
However, in a city, most people acknowledge the police have to be responsible for public safety, and citizens shooting off firearms is just going to get their neighbor in the next apartment killed. It should be a bit like the old west, you check your guns when you come into town, or else the Earp brothers might just come shoot you down in front of the OK corral (I think our countries first major public gun-control dispute).
Guns should be controlled mostly by population density and to some degree they already are. Firing guns in city limits is largely banned, while in the country you can do whatever you want, simply because there is more room. Urban populations don't need firearms and violent crime tends to be concentrated where there are too many weapons where they don't belong. It ain't Buck out in the county shooting things up, it's the drug dealers in the cities.
April 18, 2007 11:34 AM,
Doctorow was right on the money. Whatever the true causes of these tragedies, the same people always pipe up to let us know it's all due to society's neglect of their own favorite issues. From the anti-Muslim people to Fred Phelps, they all manage to get their views heard.
April 18, 2007 11:36 AM,
Mark,
I agree, a semi-automatic rifle would have done this much damage as well. I think semi-automatic rifles should be illegal for casual owners. Any really sporting hunter can take the 1.5 sec to chamber a new round between shots.
As someone who grew up on a farm 150 miles from the nearest city, I can say that I knew of no one who thought of their guns as being for protection. Once you need a gun to protect yourself, you've already lost. The only people I've ever met who felt that a gun would protect you live in cities or large towns. All of the families I knew growing up had guns in their house. But those guns were for shooting coyotes or gophers, pests that make farming more difficult, or for hunting. In that sense, a gun is like a tractor - a tool of the trade. I've fired a lot of guns, but never a semi-automatic weapon. Nor do I need to. I now live in a medium-sized city, and find I have no need for a gun. If I want to fire one, I can do it when I visit relatives.
Could someone truly determined blow something up? Sure. But I tend to agree with Chris, just because it's possible, doesn't mean we need to make it easy. Someone truly determined to hurt people will always find a way. But tools *designed* to hurt people don't need to be so accessible. It seems paradoxical that in a society where we don't allow people to bring toothpaste onto airplanes, that we allow anyone with cash to buy weapons.
April 18, 2007 1:00 PM,
You're right, we don't need to make it easier.
But the whole prevention of killing sprees to me seems like a distraction from the more relevant, more common, and less frequently source of gun violence, which is violent crime and domestic violence.
It weakens our arguments to say that sprees can really be prevented. And trying to fit killing sprees into a gun control argument is like pushing the square peg through the circular hole. It's the kind of specific situation that legislation for would be a terrible mistake. We need more generalizable laws.
For instance, laws that prevent domestic violence convicts or those with domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms will save more lives than laws meant to prevent massacres.
April 18, 2007 2:19 PM,
I meant to say, "less frequently-discussed"
April 18, 2007 2:24 PM,
It is not wrong to take advantage of this for political purposes. You're just taking advantage of the sliding frame as it slides over your sweet spot.
April 18, 2007 2:29 PM,
You make it sound dirty ted.
April 18, 2007 2:30 PM,
You make it sound dirty ted.
Is it wrong to make out with a drunk chick that you met in a bar?
April 18, 2007 2:52 PM,
I hope not.
April 18, 2007 2:53 PM,
While you claim that Cho's purchases of the firearms used were legal, evidence indicates that this may not be true. Federal law requires purchasers of firearms from a licensed dealer to complete a BATFE Form 4473. One of the questions asked is if the purchaser has been committed to a mental institution, which Cho apears to have been in 2005. If Cho had answered in the affirmative, he would have been denied purchase. Falsifying information on the Form 4473 is a felony offense.
Thus, the problem seems to be with the sharing of data between Mental Institutions and the State and the Federal Government. The tragedy might have been prevented with a better system of checks and balances.
April 18, 2007 3:47 PM,
News articles have indicated he purchased the gun legally from Roanoke arms. That's all I know.
April 18, 2007 4:16 PM,
The form says:
Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective or have you been comitted to a mental institution?
Had he?
April 18, 2007 4:51 PM,
He was committed at one point, but that might not be the same as being "adjudicated mentally defective". I don't know the specifics of the law there.
April 18, 2007 5:55 PM,
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