When Will The Insanity End?

I came across this on Wonkette which labeled this as, "Hello God, It's Me, an *******." American Family Radio wants you to know that shootings have nothing to do with the mass production and easy availability of weapons to troubled people, or the persistent nature of our gun culture, the lack of mental health support, and our culture that believes that violence solves problems. Instead all these school problems have to do with the lack of God in the classroom with no prayers or bible studies (never mind that one of the school shootings happened during a prayer meeting). Abortion, condom availability, Gays, lack of spanking, and Bill Clinton's affair with Monica led to all the school shootings.

Then Huffington Post found a nugget on the Charlie Rose show with Tom Delay offering his solution:

Rose (holding up a newspaper photo of Cho Seung-Hui): The picture on the other side is the gunman at Virginia Tech. This is an old debate, and we don't have time to talk about it, but does it make you rethink guns? What he did was all legal. He went in and got a handgun, bought a handgun, was checked, had no criminal record. Went back a month later, got another gun. Do we need to do something about this?

DeLay: Yeah. We need to remove the ban of guns on the Virginia Tech campus, and allow people to defend themselves, and allow people to get concealed carry licenses. Maybe if there was one person in there that had a concealed carry license, was carrying a gun, he wouldn't have killed as many people.

Rose: So if there was a student in the classroom or a professor in the classroom that had a gun, they could have defended those students?

DeLay: That's right. Rose: Do you think that's the answer?

DeLay: That is the answer.

Rose: More guns?

DeLay: It's been proven over and over again.

Rose: More guns in the hands of students in this case, or in the professors' is the answer to--

DeLay: It has been proven as such. The criminal doesn't know that you have a gun.

Yup. Shots go off and all of the sudden you have armed freaked out students increasing the chance of friendly fire and leaving law enforcement to figure out who is the shooter in a sea of armed students. All this leads to is an arms race on school property. Yes, that is what we need! Wouldn't Jesus proclaim, "More Guns! More Ammo!"?

When Will The Insanity End?

I came across this on Wonkette which labeled this as, "Hello God, It's Me, an *******." American Family Radio wants you to know that shootings have nothing to do with the mass production and easy availability of weapons to troubled people, or the persistent nature of our gun culture, the lack of mental health support, and our culture that believes that violence solves problems. Instead all these school problems have to do with the lack of God in the classroom with no prayers or bible studies (never mind that one of the school shootings happened during a prayer meeting). Abortion, condom availability, Gays, lack of spanking, and Bill Clinton's affair with Monica led to all the school shootings.

Then Huffington Post found a nugget on the Charlie Rose show with Tom Delay offering his solution:

Rose (holding up a newspaper photo of Cho Seung-Hui): The picture on the other side is the gunman at Virginia Tech. This is an old debate, and we don't have time to talk about it, but does it make you rethink guns? What he did was all legal. He went in and got a handgun, bought a handgun, was checked, had no criminal record. Went back a month later, got another gun. Do we need to do something about this?

DeLay: Yeah. We need to remove the ban of guns on the Virginia Tech campus, and allow people to defend themselves, and allow people to get concealed carry licenses. Maybe if there was one person in there that had a concealed carry license, was carrying a gun, he wouldn't have killed as many people.

Rose: So if there was a student in the classroom or a professor in the classroom that had a gun, they could have defended those students?

DeLay: That's right. Rose: Do you think that's the answer?

DeLay: That is the answer.

Rose: More guns?

DeLay: It's been proven over and over again.

Rose: More guns in the hands of students in this case, or in the professors' is the answer to--

DeLay: It has been proven as such. The criminal doesn't know that you have a gun.

Yup. Shots go off and all of the sudden you have armed freaked out students increasing the chance of friendly fire and leaving law enforcement to figure out who is the shooter in a sea of armed students. All this leads to is an arms race on school property. Yes, that is what we need! Wouldn't Jesus proclaim, "More Guns! More Ammo!"?

Ugh!

Joe Derbyshire of the conservative National Review calls the victims of Virginia Tech cowards. Here is what Keith Olbermann had to say about Derbyshire and folks who had really awful thoughts about this tragedy.



I have been appalled at the few who are now coming out and blaming the victims for not rushing the guy with the automatic pistol with cartridges of 10-16 bullets each. You have kids in class in the morning -- probably the first class of the day. As a former college student, any class before 10 am I would be tired and out of it. Out of the blue someone goes through the door and shoots the teacher and then your fellow students before you can even form a thought. I suspect the first class had it the worst, as they didn't have the benefit of hearing the bullets and screams.

There were tales of heroism. I think that people need to cut them some slack as these people had no reason to suspect that they would have to respond to such violence in a language or engineering class. It is unreasonable to expect these people to be able to make split second calculations as to their chances against a mad man with such weapons.

It is entirely too easy and unfair to judge people in the safety of your own home and imagine what you would do. The horrible truth is that no one knows what they would do in those exact circumstances to try is pure speculative fantasy.

Can we stop blaming the victims of this tragedy and wish them peace? Can we instead think about what it is about our culture that our country is uniquely prone to this phenomena?