Killing Fields?

Before I start this, I want to say that what happened in Blacksburg, VA was a tragedy. The families of those people are suffering and have my deepest sympathies.

 

The young man who killed them had some serious mental problems - problems that should have prevented him from legally buying a weapon of any kind. But someone dropped the ball by being more concerned about his future than about the future of anyone he might hurt or kill.

 

And now the anti-gun forces are out en masse - claiming that if private citizens weren't allowed to own guns, then this young man wouldn't have gotten one to kill all those people with. But we have something in this country called the "Bill of Rights" which provides for the private ownership of weapons for self protection. Leave it to them to interject politics into this tragedy.

 

Which brings me to what this is about: Have we, by allowing the anti-gun, "save the children' people to remove the right of citizens to keep and bear arms at various locations, such as schools and hospitals etc, inadvertently created 'killing fields'?

 

People with mental problems wanting to kill others know they can go to a school, and kill as many people as they can without anyone to stop them until the police arrive with their weapons (or until they do as this young man did and kill himself). Self protection is a right that we have - and I think it's horrible that we can't exercise that right that anymore - because someone's afraid of a gun.

 

If even one person at that college had been allowed to carry a weapon (legally, with the so-called 'right to carry' permit) on campus, that person could likely have prevented so many others from being killed. Most school and college security forces aren't even armed. And the police can't be everywhere.

 

If my kids were still in school, I'd be all for a couple of teachers or the school/campus security having the right to carry and being armed (not that I'd let the students know which teachers had that permit. Let them wonder. It might make them think twice before they do something like this) to prevent something like what happened at VT from happening somewhere else. 

 

For an example, take airline pilots. After 9-1-1, the option came for them to arm themselves to protect their crew and passengers from terrorists. Now, many pilots have gone through the course that allows them to carry a gun into the cockpit - and no one knows which ones it might be, so a terrorist would have no way of knowing if he was on a flight with an armed pilot - or air marshal and would end up dead if he tried to take over the plane.

 

Are our children less precious than airline passengers? Why not arm the people who are there to protect our children from things like this so that they can protect them?

 

Oh, and for all you foreigners who are so aghast that this happened, and are placing the blame at the door of our being able to own guns - people don't need guns to kill each other. Even the young man in Virginia considered setting off a bomb instead of using a gun - and a bomb could easily have killed more people.

 

So don't feel so high and mighty. We still have the 'right' (what part of that do you not understand?) to keep and bear arms. And we also still have the right to say what we want, even if it's not in agreement with the government's stand on an issue. Without guns, we could easily lose that right, because the politicians would know that they were governing a heard of sheep - not human beings.

 

Disclaimer: As usual, the above is my opinion, and I have a right to express it. If you disagree, fine. Get your own blog to tell others about it.