Viriginia Shooting is Just the Beginning

Note: All updates are in orange.

Brace yourselves, America - the next round of draconian guns laws are just around the corner. Actually, they’ve been sitting on Capital Hill since the Democratic party takeover of congress, but were stalled until now.

These bills, coupled with worse waiting in the wings, are going to flood the legislature after today’s horrible shooting in Virginia - the largest mass shooting in US history. Even if the Bush administration doesn’t support the gun control bills coming, look for them to expand their police state accordingly. Parties irrelevant, government lusts for power and control, and incidents like this hands it to them on a silver platter.

Thirty one Thirty two Thirty three people, including the shooter, are confirmed dead, with twenty twenty six more injured, from the incident on Virginia Tech’s campus. Apparently, this lone shooter, armed with a .22 and a 9mm pistol, strolled without words through a dorm and then a class building, shooting apparently selected targets; at least to a degree. Full story here.

I work at the University of Utah, which imposed an un-Constitutional firearm rule that bans those with valid carry permits from carrying on campus, which the courts have been battling over ever since. One of the primary concerns held by the University President and others here who are incapable of understanding not only the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but common sense; is that if those who go about the task of obtaining carry permits and passing background checks are allowed to carry, it will make people somehow unsafe to be around them. Funny, Virginia tech had equivalent rules and it did nothing to help out when this illegally carrying and criminally acting shooter took to the campus grounds. On the other hand, if one of those living in the afflicted dorm or in the classrooms had been legally carrying, things might have worked out differently.

The basic premise of gun control is flawed: it is the belief that by making a rule, you will prevent crime. If this was the case, we could just outlaw murder and have nothing to worry about. The fact of the matter is, criminals don’t obey the law, any law - which is why we call them criminals. They don’t care what rules you put in place, what punishments they might suffer should they live through their actions; they are only concerned with carrying out their goals, whatever they may be. Rules prevent nothing. Expecting those of nefarious intent to abide by the rules, is plainly stupid. Laws exist to outline society’s punishments for transgression, they cannot prevent any criminal activity in and of themselves. They are structure to provide for government imposed punishment for criminal events after they occur.

There is but one proper reaction to the criminal use of force, lawful use of force in return, when and where it happens. This is why the police carry firearms and not feather dusters. The People have the same rights that police officers do, to preserve their own lives in the face of attack. Certainly the police have every justification to carry on the job, as they are setting themselves up to be possible targets by putting on a badge. That same badge also weighs in for the People, as criminals take considerable caution not to commit crimes when the police are around. Conversely, that means it’s likely that when something bad happens, the police are not going to be there to protect the public. If the police were everywhere, we’d be living in a certified police state.

What choice do we have then, but to protect ourselves? No discussion can be made over the duty of the protection of one’s life, without taking into consideration the obligations of the intended victim. The one and only person who has any duty or obligation to protect that person, is themselves. No one else has the duty to protect them, not even the police. The courts have unanimously ruled that the police have no obligation to protect anyone in particular. Read that sentence a couple of times to yourself and then reflect on how you feel about lawful carry of firearms for self protection.

What incidents like this show is not that we haven’t gone far enough to control firearms, but that we’ve gone too far. We’ve disabled the innocent from protecting themselves, while enabling the criminals to commit their evil intent without obstruction.