Yesterday in Tucson, Arizona, in case you were living under a rock, there was a tragic shooting which left six people dead and fourteen others injured. Among the dead were a nine year old girl, a Federal judge, a congressional aide, a retired church worker, and two other retired ladies. Among the wounded was a forty year old Congresswoman, which elevated this shooting onto the front page of every American (and Canadian, and British, and ??) newspaper and news website. Otherwise, unfortunately, this event would be nothing but a news ticker on the bottom of the CNN telecast. It probably would have made a story, and you would hear about it on the news, but they never would have preempted "Your Money" for it.
That's only one of the issues that raise their ugly heads after a tragedy like this. Regardless of the motives (or lack thereof) of the gunman (and possible accomplices), it's our reaction to these events that are telling. You can expect a bunch of rhetoric about the "softening" of the political dialog in the US, the questioning of second amendment rights (why is it that anyone can go and legally buy a handgun with a thirty round clip?), the questioning of Arizona's gun law (where it's legal to carry a handgun without a concealed weapon permit), and many others. But, in the end, nothing will change. A lunatic white man shooting at a crowd of people is seen as less threatening than some foreign born brown person with a different religion than most. The second changes our behavior, the first causes us to talk a lot, but changes nothing.
That's only one of the issues that raise their ugly heads after a tragedy like this. Regardless of the motives (or lack thereof) of the gunman (and possible accomplices), it's our reaction to these events that are telling. You can expect a bunch of rhetoric about the "softening" of the political dialog in the US, the questioning of second amendment rights (why is it that anyone can go and legally buy a handgun with a thirty round clip?), the questioning of Arizona's gun law (where it's legal to carry a handgun without a concealed weapon permit), and many others. But, in the end, nothing will change. A lunatic white man shooting at a crowd of people is seen as less threatening than some foreign born brown person with a different religion than most. The second changes our behavior, the first causes us to talk a lot, but changes nothing.
You're never going to filter out the nutbars when you make it easy to own a weapon like the Glock 9mm that Jared Lee Loughner had. The only good thing that could come out of this mess is the one thing that never will:
- Make it very hard to follow through on your deranged thoughts.
What if we made owning a gun as hard as lighting a fire without matches? What if you made it distasteful to run attack ads or incite hatred of your opponent? What if you could take away most of the potential "triggers" for a madman?
UPDATE: If you watched the Rachel Maddow Show tonight on MSNBC, she goes through a truncated list of all the firearm/handgun related mass-murders in the US over the last twenty years. You forget just how many of them there were...
UPDATE: If you watched the Rachel Maddow Show tonight on MSNBC, she goes through a truncated list of all the firearm/handgun related mass-murders in the US over the last twenty years. You forget just how many of them there were...
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