Virginia Tech

I didn’t write about it last week because I am sick or the American attitude towards guns. The country’s cowboy past has it hog tied and blindfolded. Yes the guy was a nutcase and was liable to go off the deep end sometime. But America’s complete inability to come to terms with its adoration of violence, as typified by its love affair with hand guns, made his lunacy far more deadly. A lunatic with a knife cannot perpetrate mass murder. A lunatic armed to the teeth with rapid firing hand guns can. End of story.

So. Of course I sympathize with the families of the victims. But spare me the nonsense. America loves guns. It is a violent culture. It will always produce mass killers as a result. That there are more hand guns in America than people tells me that America is not serious about violent crime. That some folks advocate carrying side arms as a deterrent against crime is a sign of the moral bankruptcy of the American attitude towards violence: can you imagine the mayhem at the first “citizens shoot out” in some midwestern mall? Everywhere else in the world has this issue nailed. Ban hand guns. For those of you who advocate the “guns as deterrent” argument go look at the international figures for violent crimes. Go look at the numbers of accidental deaths.

The facts don’t lie: America has this one horribly wrong. What’s the NRA slogan? “Guns don’t kill, people do” I agree. People do kill. So why arm them to the teeth?