Well, CSPAN callers this morning have already

[Skidmore]

called for students to be allowed to carry guns, implored the nation not to take away guns or rap music, blamed terrorists and partial birth abortions for the VT shootings.

[Philosoraptor]

1. Once you take God outta the schools, the devil steps in....

Waiting for that one...

[journalist3072]

7. Don't see anything wrong with that; it's true. eom

[gaspee]

14. you've got

to be kidding me.

[Richard Steele]

30. Wow. Are you sure you're on the right website?

Just....wow. :wow:

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. WTF?

:wtf: :crazy:

[Critters2]

42. I beleive you may have forgotten this...

:sarcasm:

At least I hope so.

[meegbear]

2. What, no gay marriage?

C'mon callers, get on the ball.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. And if every student had been packing heat,

how many would have known how to properly use the weapon so as not to harm innocents? How many would have been able to shoot another person? I think the killer didn't plan to make it out alive and would have continued firing even if fired upon. And remember, if you are taken by surprise, that gun under your pillow or in your shoulder holster doesn't do all that much good.

[MiniMe]

11. Whoever pulled out the gun would have been the first one shot

[Hissyspit]

4. Yeah, as a professor, I want one of my lunatic students to be able to bring a gun to class.

I don't think so.

[malaise]

5. Yep

Give them guns so that after the bar brawl, they can settle scores. The gun manufactuers' bottom line is way more important than human lives. :sarcasm:

[Critters2]

43. Not just one...ALL of them.

That's what the gun nuts want. You don't think that would make you feel safer?

[izzie]

6. Why not blame the guy that did it?

I frankly wonder about not telling the kids what was going on but how do you do that? They were all over the place. Plus a shot in a dorm would hardly mean something like this going on. Can it be any more of a riddle than sending people back into one of the trade building when the other was burning?

[baldguy]

10. Gun violence happens because of guns.

If he had gone around stabbing people, he wouldn't have been able to kill 32 people. Every nation in the world has it's share of crazys - Only in America do we give them guns.

[Prophet 451]

17. We have gun massacres here too

Not to dispute the general point but if someone is determined to kill people, they'll get hold of a firearm somehow or use something improvised (an explosive perhaps). We ban all handguns here (the UK) but we still get massacres occasionally. We ban most other kinds of weapon too but it hasn't made much noticeable difference. Crime is a cultural problem, not a problem with the weapon itself. Making something illegal will not stop the people who don't obey the law anyway.

[baldguy]

20. Look at murder stats. The US has more murders period.

When someone is killed by a handgun in the UK or Canada, its national news. When it happens in the US, it MIGHT get page B-3 below the fold.

Here's an example from my local paper. A 16-yr old kid killed an 18-yr old kid. This is a normal occurrence in the US. It happens dozens of times each day around the country. What sort of coverage would it have received in your local paper? How often does shit like this happen in your home town?

http://www.buffalonews.com/103/story/55779.html

Yes, gun massacres happen in civilized countries - once every ten years. Here, it happens every week. Almost every day.

[Prophet 451]

21. You're overstating slightly

Only slightly but a gun murder is only national news here when the victim is especially young or telegenic (and don't get me started on what that says about the media).

However, I maintain that the problem is not with the firearms themselves but with the American attitude toward them (and the US school system but that's a different topic). Some other nations have high levels of privately held firearms without anything like the same level of firearm violence. To me, that says that the problem is not with the weapon but with the culture's attitude towards it.

[izzie]

22. I wonder if it does not have something to do with no one

being from one place for long and not knowing any one? Look at the old West and the killings and how it stopped. Not that I think that is all of it but may add to it. For a Ch. Nation we never seem to learn its rules but then killing each other has been with every one world wide.

[Prophet 451]

25. That's possible

Of course, social problems like this rarely have a single cause. There's usually dozens of different factors involved but yeah, that could be one of them.

[izzie]

32. Nothing is easy and I am sure their are a million reasons.

Hitting back when one feels put out seems to have been with people for ever. I my self think religious is only rules made up so that people can get alone together. Almost all have a sort of 10 rules to live by. and all societies seem to need it. Each 'gun' of war has sort of filleted into society so that the ones that kill can do it better. Or so I think. Early Am. did not all have guns and I tend to think that the freedom of guns were maybe for the local military home armies. The court of courts said I am wrong but I think I maybe right on this.

[Prophet 451]

33. Disagree to an extent

I think religion and the "rules" of civilised society grew up independantly and then became intertwined. The idea of the Big 10 rules is unusual outside the Abrahamic faiths. Buddhism has a system of karma instead, Taoism (my father's philosophy) doesn't even have that. My own faith (Luciferian Satanism) has only one rule: "Seek justice in all things", we're not even commanded to worship (Lord Lucifer doesn't require us to think of him, he just requires us to think).

I suspect that the freedom of firearms in the USA came about for two reasons. The first was that teh Founders had just been through a long, bruising war with England (my own country) and, towards the end of that war, had really suffered for lack of troops and weapons. It's a little known fact but three-quarters of the gunpowder used during the revolutionary war was supplied by the French and, they also supplied massive amounts of money and quite a few troops toward the end. So that lack of troops and weapons had to have been in teh Founders minds. Thus, the freedom to keep and bear arms allowed for the calling up of a theoretically unlimited number of citizen militia should they ever be needed.

The second factor was the advancement into the West. Now, I'm not going to quibble about the amount of firearms in the Old West but the point is that through the blossaming mass media and the advent of dime or pulp novels, the image was popularised that the West was a lawless place where one needed to go armed to ensure one's survival and in some areas, that was true (I spent some time in South Africa shortly after the fall of apartheid which was in much the same situation and yes, I went armed). Ever watch Western movies? I like westerns. Well, there's a scene in Young Guns where Doc Skurlock is reading a newspaper report of Billy the Kid's exploits, pauses and says "Christ, this country needs a hero" and he's right. Heroes of the popular imagination tend not to be intellectual people, they tend to be rough and ready macho types and while the Founders were held as heroes, their intellectualism prevented them from capturing the public imagination in the way that outlaws like the Kid and frontier lawmen like Wyatt Earp did. That association of heroes with guns and especially with pistols was then exported across the country and persists to this day. Even now, think of a fictional detective (for example) and your vision is likely to owe more to Dirty Harry than to Sherlock Holmes (which also says much about the difference between American and British self-perception).

[bighart]

24. It IS NOT THE FAULT OF A GUN WHEN SOMEONE IS SHOT. That would be like blaming a car

every time a drunk driver kills someone in an accident!! Very well put Prophet 451. I believe it is way to easy for anyone that wants one to get a gun in the US, but a ban is not going to solve the problem. The issue here is a culture of violence and no regard for the consequences of one's actions. Weapons can be fashioned from just about anything, and while guns make a violent situation lethal very quickly, they are not the only thing that can do so. We need to address the hopelessness and anger that fuel these kinds of incidents. We keep putting a band-aid on the symptom and never address the root cause, A CULTURE THAT TOLERATES AND EVEN GLORIFIES VIOLENCE AND DEGRADE THE VALUE OF LIFE IN GENERAL AS WELL. I keep thinking about this and the issue of global warming. If people, especially in the US, don't care about life in general, what the hell makes anyone think the issue of global warming will ever truly get addressed.

[baldguy]

27. Show me a car that's designed to kill.

Glorified violence and degradation of life is an INTRINSIC PART of gun culture.

[havocmom]

44. HUMMERS

the car for guys who don't wanna play with guns but still wanna roll over everything?

It's not the car that kills. It's not the gun that kills.

The human operator, running on rage or disinterest kills.

Bats kill. Tossing people down stairs kills. Cars kill. Being too lazy to pay attention kills. Hell, unsafe food kills.

The common element is people who don't value other people's lives and behave in negative ways as a lifestyle.

Violence
Greed
Inappropriate rage

The list of what kills is very long but boils down to humans not being healthy in dealings with other humans.

If cutting unnecessary deaths is really the goal, start by eliminating cars and swimming pools. Sure, not designed to kill, but they sure do rack up the numbers anyway. Wipe em out and think of the lives saved ;)

[havocmom]

41. More murders would = we are MORE VIOLENT in the US

Gee, so it's not the guns, it's the culture. We do find some amazing ways to kill in America. Guns might make it easier for those sick puppies with little imagination, but the root is the tendency toward violence instead of constructive conflict management.

We LOVE our men of action mythos way too much. Peaceful heroes too often go unheralded. Look at how easy it is for hawks to beat doves in polling places. The society accepts too much violence. Boys will be boys is easier to say than actually teaching youngsters to respect and honor others, look for solutions which are win/win rather than win/dead. Grow up in a culture where behaving badly gets you the reward and you get too many bad behaviors.

Mental health care and community resources for people matter. But in the US, too many just don't wanna pay enough in taxes that communal betterment can happen.

Was reading that the guy who blew up the school in 1927 (worst school killing in US, and no guns involved) did it because he was unhappy about having to pay taxes and wanted to hurt other people via killing their children. The guy got on the school board so he could access the school and set charges.

So, it's the VIOLENCE that kills - Mental health issues play a big role in that. And, evidently, so do tax evaders. People just don't want to contribute to the general well being of the society. Greed kills.

Flame away.

[rasputin1952]

8. I am watchng this as well...looks to me they were calling 10

minutes before broadcast to spell out their talking points.

People carrying guns on campus is a bad idea.

Fear makes these people speak irrationally, and they believe everything can be dealt w/through violent measures.

There is plenty of blame to go around. things were not handled in an intelligent manner, most likely to maintain some sense of decorum for the college after the 1st killings.

[madrchsod]

9. everyone armed ? just what the police would want in a situation

like this--who`s the shooter? why does cspan bother to put on people who can not think rationally?

[MiniMe]

12. Not to mention other students

Thats what I would want when you are walking around with a bunch of teenagers and young adults, to have all of them carrying a gun. Yup, that would make me feel safe. :sarcasm:

[gaspee]

15. yeah

the age group known for their mental stability. I don't know about everyone else, but my emotions were just a wee bit harder to control at that age. If my 19 year old self had free and easy access to a handgun, I don't know what I might have done. These days, a couple of decades later, that wouldn't be the case.

[Strelnikov_]

16. Not to mention one person trading shots with another both thinking the other

is the shooter.

[lostnotforgotten]

13. Have They Blamed Clinton Yet?

eom

[Prophet 451]

18. Partial birth abortions?

How the f{reak} do they have anything to do with it?

[mwb970]

19. The token fundy at the office wants everyone armed.

Our resident right-wing wacko is often heard to opine that he will only feel "truly safe" when every single person is armed with deadly force. He says that will eliminate all gun violence.

He also loves Tom Clancy and any kind of war porn. You know, the stuff Jesus always talked about.

[alfredo]

23. If everyone carried a gun and the cops show up at the scene,

how does he/she tell who is the assailant and who is the victim?

[Prophet 451]

26. The one who doesn't drop their weapon is the assailant n/t

[KharmaTrain]

28. Not To Mention The "Bypastander Factor"

The gun nuts assume every person with a gun knows how to operate it properly and that every shot will hit.

They're all John Wayne's ya know. That's why so many have registered to serve our nation in Iraq. :sarcasm:

[alfredo]

31. The cop has a split second to determine who the bad guy is. The

bystanders (armed or otherwise) are already freaked out and no telling how they would react to someone charging into the room.

[DearAbby]

29. One argued to have a "room gun" in each class room...

I actually argued with a R-winger last night...His solution "to have a "room gun" in each class room." Said "it would put an end to these situations." How ignorant is that?...have a weapon easily accessable for the next time someone goes postal.

It's easy to sit in your chair and say..."having armed students would have defused the situation." They forget. looking at another human being, down the sights of a gun, would and could you shoot? Not everyone is a born Rambo.

[Catherine Vincent]

34. One caller thought the attorney firings situation be dropped because

this nationis in mourning. Yet she blabbered on about Clinton and whitewater (theft of banks) and how he fired all the attorneys in Arkansas. This woman was talking out of her (_|_).

[librechik]

35. The conservative base ihas plenty of free time to blather, it seems

waiting on the hold line for hours while the rest of us get ready for work!

They cabn be cleaning their guns, while the wait, I guess!

[AuntPatsy]

36. They didn't blame video games? Must be lax..

[Rocknrule]

37. No they did

Since you know, no one ever committed murder before videogames were invented

[LSK]

38. no blaming Clinton???

:shrug:

[havocmom]

40. Only way abortions would have played a part in the shootings

would be the perp's mother's failure to have one.

What are people drinking to make the silly connections they make?

Critical judgment, an idea whose time has come.