http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/24/va.tech.niu/index.html
Quote:
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The owner of a company that sold firearm merchandise to both the Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University shooters announced Wednesday that he will sell his guns at cost for the next two weeks in hopes that "law-abiding" citizens will buy them to prevent similar tragedies.
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I could ramble off a number of quotes, including the famous "If guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns." But I won't (well, other than that one). We've all heard them.
Those in favor of making guns illegal would simply rather blame an inanimate object rather than the person using the weapon. It's easier that way. We don't need to address the social problems behind rampages like this. We can just blame guns.
And we'll cite statistics about lower murder rates in countries that ban guns. Of course, we'll conveniently ignore statistics about nations with guns who still have less crime.
We'll pleasure ourselves with correlation and simply assume causation--it's easier that way.
We'll do all this to avoid blaming ourselves. We'd rather blame a weapon rather than trying to understand how our society manages to produce individuals who want to become mass murders.
We'd rather believe that if guns were illegal, criminals wouldn't be able to get guns.
We'd rather believe that if guns were illegal, our society would stop producing killers.
Because the land before guns was one of gum drops and fairy tales, where nobody killed anyone. Where calm and peace reigned, maternally looked after by green faeries.
It's easier that way.
Plus, not to mention they're FUCKING AWESOME!
Yeah, he intentionally sold your students weapons so that they could kill eachother, sounds like the perfect plan to me. What a retard.
I agree pretty much with everything DranoK said. I think some of those issues are a bit too much to tackle realistically, but i agree that we need to be looking at why these people are killing eachother, and attempting to prevent it. Making guns illegal will not prevent gun related crime. Just like prohibition didnt stop the consumption or manufacturing of alcohol, it only pushed its distribution into the hands of desperate and or disreputable folk, who took it underground, where it was harder to monitor.
I think this thread goes along the lines of our capital punishment debate in that, if we really want to go there, we can try to truly get to the root of the problem. Taking on human corruption is much more difficult than blaming a deadly object though. :P
Shit like that makes you unpopular. And that just won't do in a popularity contest.
Want to get elected? Screw the real issues. Crusade against drugs, guns, terrorists, video game violence, and porn (especially if you can make every porn argument into a kiddie porn argument). Do that and you win.
NINE ELEVEN!