Violence

It has been a gross couple of days.

Lou Dobbs has said some smart things about the Virginia Tech Massacre. You can find them here. I'll summarize here though if you don't want to read that article.

The VTech killings are an absolute travesty. Even though there have been 250 school shootings in the past 80 years, the biggest killers in colleges are alcohol and suicide. Binge Drinking, say officials, also leads to the majority of the Rape cases reported on campuses. And then there's the violence that is not sensational, the individual murders, beat-downs and robberies.

Then we get incidents where the very next day 157 are killed in explosions in Baghdad. It doesn't get nearly the coverage the VTech killings did. It's half a world a way. But it's a more solvable situation than what happened in Blacksburg. That kid was an anomaly. A tragic anomaly. These blasts in Baghdad are part of a statement of terror and a direct reaction to the political turmoil that has been caused largely by the US-led "intervention." These people by and large just want the United States out.

And on the same day, we are treated to ridiculous shit like this where Secret Service Agents aren't competent enough to use their own firearms. The NRA and gun lobbyists are worried that the Virgina Tech Bloodbath is going to be "bogarted" for the anti-gun cause. They should be more worried about this story. Both stories, of course, argue similar points, but the Gun Accident where trained Secret Service Agents wind up injuring each other unintentionally speaks stronger than the kid who goes batshit and takes out 32 of his peers. There is no stopping the latter from committing some act of violence but there is plenty we can do about the accidents.

Anyway. It's been a gross couple of days.