Monday, April 16, 2007

Stick To Your Guns

The tragedy at Virginia Tech underscores one crucial thing. We're on our own when it get's right down to it.

When I was a kid there wasn't any stigma attached to guns. My friend and I would take our daisy BB guns and walk down the streets in town to the state park for some plinking and no one batted an eye. Not mine, but some schools had shooting programs and students would stow their rifles in their lockers. I've owned guns since before I was a teenager. In my wallet is a license to carry concealed and most often I do. I say this to set the stage for my comments about what happened today.

It doesn't matter how things changed since those more innocent days but we can all agree that things changed for the worse. Maybe it's the media's fault, maybe the government and it's machinations are responsible, possibly we've lost direction as a species or it's TV. Our society sucks and it's getting worse. No getting around the fact that there are a lot of sick people now and possibilities abound for ugly situations today like at that school. You can't stop those people from being sick and creating those situations. And depending on others to protect you in those situations is a lost cause.

Again and again in court, rulings show that cops have "no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from private individuals." No cop, no soldier, no authority is supposed to look out for you. It's up to you to protect you. Whether it's supposed to be that way or not, that's the society we're living in.

Which is why any law that prevents you from doing that is an unjust law. unfortunately one such unjust law was the campus policy at Virginia Tech which prohibited students from concealed carry. Every time one of these mass murders happens you have to wonder how it would have played out if one of the victims was armed and could stop the blood letting. If you haven't you should listen to one Suzanna Hupp, who watched her parents get shot at Luby's restaurant in Texas:

"Even if you choose not to have a gun, as the bad guy who ignored all the laws is getting close to you and as he levels that firearm at one of your children, don't you hope the person next to you has chosen to carry a gun and knows how to use it?"

We might be getting into one of those shooting spree periods where gun control is going to be yakked about yet again. But now more than ever with the threat of authoritarian excess and people going mad from living in a sick culture, hang onto your weapons.
If you haven't seen Dr Hupp's testimony at a senate hearing where she relates her story and put's the execrable senator Shumer on notice, this is it:


Cost of the War in Iraq
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