Walter Shapiro,
I just read your salon.com article titled "Repeal the Second Amendment" and I almost threw up. It sickens me that an educated person like yourself would use what happened to those victims of the Virginia Tech massacre and the following emotional turmoil to support your own anti-Bill of Rights agenda. There are plenty of other countries you could move to where you would be given less rights, so don't attack our rights in this country.
As an editor you need to consider facts before you form an opinion and try to sway others. How is it that while the city of DC had banned guns for some years it lead the nation in homocides? Guns banned, yet homocide increases?! The simple fact is guns are used much more often defensively than for crime. Sometimes the mere presense of the law abiding citizen's gun prevents crime without shots fired--oh how rarely that makes headlines, though. I personally know people are alive today thanks to their guns, not law enforcement. In areas where we the people are allowed to carry guns crime is actually lower. And why is that a shooting like this didn't occur sooner at a different location in the state of Virginia? It seems to me that a shooting like this didn't occur elsewhere in Virginia because the killer knew better. You see the people of Virginia still believe in all 10 Ammendments in the Bill of Rights. They allow for lawful concealed carry of weapons literally everywhere--except of course Virginia Tech! Virginia Tech disarmed it's adult students and professors. Virginia Tech created an environment where the killer could just slaughter people. He had to have known that if tried that in a place that wasn't a "gun free" area there would have been a fight not a massacre, because a lot of Virginian people lawfully carry weapons. But it's a good thing the killer followed Virginia Tech's gun control rules huh?! Do you really think, since the killer was planning to commit suicide anyway, if there had been anti-gun laws he'd have been afraid to buy a gun illegally?! Are you started to see why your feel good argument with no accurate supporting data makes no sense?
Do you even know the real reason for the 2'nd Ammendment? Do you have any concept of why our founding fathers thought it second only to freedom of speech?
Regards,
Robert
PS: I'll leave you with some more things to ponder:
* Hitler and Stalin were both advocates of gun control
* If you don't believe genocide can happen in a developed nation, ask an older Jewish person
* If you don't believe genocide can happen here in America, ask a Native American
* Just one lawful concealed firearm carried by a law abiding teacher might have stopped the Columbine massacre.
* Outside of legally carrying a firearm an elderly and/or disabled person has much less chance of defense against a younger physically fit attacker armed with a knife--hence why knife crime is now such an issue in the UK.
* There is currently a huge black market in most major cities whereby registered felons can illegally purchase guns--hence why gun control doesn't work so well...
* When owning a gun is made a crime, only criminals and the government will have them.
* No matter how many of them are hired it seems police investigate more violent crimes than they stop.
