Two Las Vegas students were critically injured and four injured in yet another shooting in the US, this one believed to be "gang-related." (BBC News)
You wonder why American right-wing nutters become so worked up about potential terrorist attacks when there's so much to be potential to be shot (or worse, to have your child shot) by a fellow citizen you don't know from Adam. In the land of the free, bloody anyone can get hold of a gun who wants one. One can therefore understand--in context---the rather bloodthirsty and distasteful rejoicing by the likes of Michelle Malkin over one of the very few occasions when an armed security guard happened to be present to return fire (Jesus having provided insufficient protection on his own to those attending the New Life Church). Score one for what this mad (well, by UK standards) Malkin calls "the culture of self-defense."
That's one gun-wielding fellow-citizen-hating killer less, I suppose, as against Christ knows how many And speaking of Christ, the security guard who killed him seems pretty sure that Jesus was guiding her every step of the way.(Denver) After all that nonsense about returning violence with love, I'm glad---not being a man of faith---he's seen the light. In Twenty-first Century America, turning the other cheek won't fly if your enemy makes up his mind to say it with high-velocity bullets.
Not being Christian and therefore never bound by the turn-the-other-cheek way of thinking, I'd say it's a bloody good job that this New Life Church anticipated the need for an armed security guard at their services. (BN-Politics) I wish the missionary training centre in the other town (where two died) had had the same foresight. (BN-Politics) Perhaps American local councils (or whatever they're called) will start providing security guards for American schoolbuses or start arming the drivers? I shouldn't think allowing schoolchildren to carry concealed weapons would be a very safe solution, but maybe that's where America will end up. It'll be like the Wild West, only with high-powered assault weapons.
It bothers me that I am becoming sufficiently used to reading about this violence that my initial reaction to each shooting is relief that it wasn't worse. Two young people critically injured on their way to school! Four others also hurt! It is---or should be---an enormity.
And I am even beginning to understand why sane yanks I respect such as Damozel and D Cupples don't think the gun culture can ever be erased. Too many armed psychos and amoral morons out there already, I suppose. What if all the good people turned in their assault rifles so the armed psychos and amoral morons knew for sure that they were the only ones who had access to deadly weapons? Etc.
But surely to Christ there must be some way to control access more effectively than they're doing now. But as Damozel has said elsewhere, before Americans can do anything about gun violence, they need to get control of the gun-control debate. Good luck to them on that one.
I love America and Americans, being married to one myself, but I'm buggered if I understand them. I hope to Christ that Britain sees what a "gun culture" is and does. And I hope my government does whatever it takes to keep it from becoming part of the British way of life.
RELATED BN-POLITICS POSTINGS
RELATED BN-POLITICS POSTINGS
Nine People in Colorado Killed or Wounded in Two Church-Related Shootings (Updated)
Child Care That Doesn't Care: On Criminal Children
Another Adolescent Gunman Opens Fire in an American School....
AT VERSUS/REVERSUS
First we Need to Control the Gun Control Debate
David Maraniss at The Washington Post: This is What Happened.
Quote of the Day for 20 April 2007. Podhoretz at NRO: Neutralizing the Derbyshire Effect.
LINKED
US students hurt in bus shooting (BBC News)
Security Guard: 'God Guided Me And Protected Me' (Denver)
Comments