K-Romulus
Member
today from the Usual Suspects
The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tue4.html
And the WashPost:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201197.html
At least the post got the "semi-auto" thing right, as opposed to the Times.
The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tue4.html
October 3, 2006
Editorial
Three School Shootings
No one will rise up to defend a man who walks into an Amish school, lines young girls up against a blackboard, ties up their feet, and then kills them before killing himself. But a surprising number of people will inevitably rise up to defend his guns, to call the man guilty but his weapons innocent.
When Charles Roberts snapped, the tools lay ready to hand. It is not clear what led him to seek out a quiet country school in Lancaster County, Pa., but it is possible he chose it because he knew that it belonged to a trusting, insular community, where there would be no one to stop him from entering with a shotgun, a rifle and an automatic pistol.
This is the third school shooting in a week. What will stick in almost everyone’s minds is the gross disparity between Mr. Roberts’s murderous intentions and the bucolic peacefulness of an Amish school in early October. But this killing is no different from the ones that took place in Wisconsin and Colorado recently.
The weapons were the same, and so was the conflict between the hideous assault of a damaged mind and the atmosphere of openness and trust that makes education possible. There are no simple solutions to this conflict. It is neither possible nor tolerable to secure every school or guard every child. Nor is it possible or politically tolerable to keep tabs on every gun. But in these killings we see an open society threatened by the ubiquity of its weapons, in which one kind of freedom is allowed to trump all others. Most gun owners are respectable, law-abiding citizens. But that is no reason to acquit the guns.
And the WashPost:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201197.html
Common Tragedy and Culprits
Shootings at an Amish school again point up the problem with guns.
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A16
A school shooting is, by definition, obscene, yet there is a special horror to the tragedy in Nickel Mines, Pa. Perhaps it is because the setting, a picturesque community in Lancaster County, was so peaceful. Or that the target was a one-room Amish school amid fields of green. Or that the victims were young girls. Yes, there are unique features that make yesterday's attack a singular tragedy. There is, however, one aspect that makes it shamefully commonplace -- guns.
The 32-year-old man who walked into the Georgetown Amish School in a rural area about 60 miles west of Philadelphia had, authorities said, armed himself with a shotgun, a rifle and a semiautomatic handgun. After releasing all the boys and some women, the gunman barricaded the doors with boards and, having bound the feet of his victims, shot to death three girls before killing himself. Eight others were critically wounded; one of the wounded later died. "This is the last place on Earth that something like this would happen," Raymond Bial, author of books on the Amish, told Bloomberg News, as if being pacifist guarantees protection from the world.
Yesterday marked the third time in less than a week that a school was the site of a fatal shooting. In Colorado, on Sept. 27, a man armed with two handguns sexually assaulted some of the six girls he held hostage before killing one of them and himself. In Wisconsin, just two days later, a 15-year-old student fatally shot a principal. Like yesterday's shootings, each incident was tragic and certainly each had unique circumstances, but all -- including near-tragedies in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada that barely made headlines -- shared the fact of the far-too-easy availability of guns.
At this early stage, it is not known what drove Charles Carl Roberts IV to yesterday's rampage or whether it could have been prevented. Indeed, there are those who will argue that nothing -- least of all laws controlling guns -- can stop a madman. That doesn't mean, though, that we shouldn't try. Sadly, rather than making it harder for the wrong people to get guns, some in Congress are seeking to make it easier. Witness the recent vote by the House of Representatives to make it more difficult for authorities to crack down on bad gun shops. Thankfully, the Senate didn't have time to take up that measure.
Our sympathies go to the people of Nickel Mines. We hope that the singular calamity that befell this community will wake up the nation to do something about the madness it can control.
At least the post got the "semi-auto" thing right, as opposed to the Times.
