Oh Shit.
Another heavily-armed misfit took out his rage on a bunch of innocent civilians in Colorado early today.
Yes, it's such a good thing our leaders (specifically that complete shitbag George W. Bush) allowed the assault-weapons ban to expire. The Aurora Colorado shooter had apparently purchased all his weapons legally during the preceding six months.
For fuck's sake people, I understand that the 2nd Amendment allows for an armed civilian populace. But I'm sure they never intended the average citizen to be free to accumulate enough firepower to fight off a cadre of police or soldiers.
Keep in mind the Bill of Rights, that hallowed document which clarified many of the rights we enjoy to this day, was written at a time when it was perfectly legal for white land-owning Americans to totally fucking OWN human beings possessing a different skin color than them!
But sure, other than that unfortunate "slavery" thing, our Founding Fathers did get a lot of things right, but even they never envisioned that some alienated kid or young adult would find it so easy to legally purchase a fuckload of lethal weapons and turn them on children watching a movie.
I mean, at least if the guy was a frustrated movie critic or something, it might be justified (I don't know if the movie sucks or not, but it's at least a scenario); but this was just some nutjob who wanted to inflict as much pain on as many people as possible.
There was no such thing as repeat-firing arms back in the late 18th century when the 2nd Amendment was hand-written on parchment. If those brilliant men had any inkling of what technology would have wrought during the next couple centuries, they might have included a codicil that limits the possession of weapons to single-shot black powder guns, or shotguns, or even revolvers, which at most can only fire five or six shots before needing a reasonably complicated reloading process, as opposed to simply dropping an empty clip out of an automatic and jamming a full one in, which takes only a few seconds. Some automatics have 14 or even 30 shot clips!
Because I do legally own a revolver for home protection, and I firmly believe that if you have a gun and you can't hit what you're aiming at in five shots or less, you have no justifiable right to be operating a potentially lethal weapon!
But, I'm a realist, and I know that we'll continue to suffer tragedies like the one that occurred today for many years to come.
It's just all so goddamned unnecessary.
3 comments:
Sadly, there are some huge questions about this awful event:
How could have he gotten hold of at least $20,000 of exotic gear if he was an unemployed student on welfare?
Where does an unemployed, introverted medical school student get the TRAINING to deploy sophisticated booby traps, tactical body armor, weapons systems and more?
Why did he open fire on innocent people but then calmly surrender to police without resistance, and then proceed to tell them about the booby-traps in his apartment?
And consider the timing. This occurred just before the U.N. vote next week on a GLOBAL small arms treaty (that could result in gun confiscation right here in the USA).
No, this was an operation that was carefully planned, heavily funded and technically advanced. Whoever was also behind this needs to be caught and brought to justice. He couldn't have acted alone...
I am a pretty liberal person when it comes to most social issues, but this is not a gun-control issue for me any more than 911 was a boxcutter-control issue.
LZ, I really do enjoy your immediate conspiratorial way of thinking. If you have more on this, feel free to post just the bullet points (no pun intended, really).
Anonymous, 911 wasn't a boxcutter-control issue, it was a lax airport-security issue. And what has the govt. done in the last 11 years? They changed the laws to make air travel safer. Yes, it's somewhat inconvenient, but we haven't had another plane hijacked since, right?
As I mentioned, I own guns and I enjoy guns. But I don't see the logic in owning an assault weapon unless I have it in my mind that someday I'll have to kill a lot of people. There is simply NO other rational use for a weapon like that.
The bit in the 2nd Amendment that most gun nuts seem to gloss over is that "well-regulated" phrase. Properly regulating anything may require shaping or even restricting some of the weapons that every god-fearing American thinks he deserves.
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