After reading the excerpt we had in Monday’s paper, I went to read this post on Bob McAlister’s blog. An excerpt:

Media forcing gun control issue into tragedy
April 17, 2007 3:50:58 PM
    Just like clockwork, the national media see a political opportunity in the tragedy at Virginia Tech. All network morning shows, at least the ones I saw, raised the issue of gun control. Here’s how CBS did it. (That link’s no longer working, Bob.)
    I don’t usually quote Rush Limbaugh, but he made a good point today. He said the pending liberal cry to "take the guns off the street" is as logical as conservatives saying because the shooter was South Korean, we should just shut down the borders and not let anybody in–ever.

I didn’t want to get into this thing, but ideological observations accusing other people of being ideological — on thin grounds — tend to provoke me. Here is a slightly edited (in other words, improved from when I sent it from my PDA this morning) version of the comment I posted in response:

"Forcing?" Seriously, Bob — I’m with you part of the way. I generally think efforts to find meaning or lessons in such events is pretty pointless. But it seems to be part of human nature — not mine, but plenty of other humans. And if you ARE going to grasp quickly for an answer, you don’t have to have an ulterior, ideological motive to think, "wouldn’t it be great if he just couldn’t have gotten ahold of those guns?" It may be pointless in a political environment in which such thoughts are anathema, but it’s a fairly reasonable idle thought.

And Rush might make a good point now and then — I don’t listen, so I don’t know (he’s on in the middle of
the day, and I work for a living) — but this isn’t one of them. Banning a national of people and trying to make sure crazies are not running around armed are hardly the same thing, in any rational scheme. It’s unAmerican to condemn a person’s nationality; it’s simple self-preservation to want to stop killers from having the means — if you can, which I doubt. You don’t address who people are; you address what they do.

Think about it; which presents a greater threat to the public weal — a crazy Korean with a hammer, or a crazy Korean with a pair of semi-automatics?

I tend to take a fatalistic attitude toward gun control. With 200 million guns chasing God knows how many crazies, it’s hard to imagine further control preventing any really determined sort from getting hands on one. The problem is that 200 million guns exist, not how we keep track of them — and good luck doing anything about that.

But it’s quite natural, and not sinister, to wish something could be done about it — unless you’re just ideologically opposed even to thinking about it.

Related Posts

• Response to Post series from James Flowers
• There are more good guys than bad guys
• The emergency curfew in Five Points
• Scooped by The State on my own danged story
• The inside tale of the curfew/closings deal
• I would discuss this, but I don’t have time
• Thoughtcrime is doubleplusungood
• Top Five courtroom dramas
• Here’s a place to talk about the school shootings
• Ozmint: “I need the Legislature’s help on this; somebody’s going to get killed” at Corrections