Journal pudge's Journal: Shooting 8
What happened today was a terrible tragedy.
That goes without saying, of course, but if I don't say that, someone might accuse me of being callous or something. I suppose they will anyway.
What I want to say is that I don't really feel much about what happened. It sucks. It's terrible. But
So I just don't see why this should get any special attention. You could say that it's important politically, and I'd agree, but that's kinda question-begging: why SHOULD it be important politically? This isn't a political issue.
I'll skip the ObGunRightsStatement and just say that the guy reloaded many times, and there's no reason to think that "low capacity" magazines would have impeded his progress significantly, so the "Assault Weapons Ban" is irrelevant to this discussion. So again, that means this isn't a political issue, because no one is talking seriously about banning regular handguns.
I suppose you could talk about how he got the gun. Maybe he got it at a gun show! Maybe he exploited "the loophole!" Or maybe there was no waiting period! He could've gotten a gun if he wanted it. People who get mad and shoot someone could benefit from a might possibly be deterred from shooting someone if they cannot get quick access to a gun. They might benefit from a "cooling off" period. But people who go on mass rampages usually bide their time.
So, I just don't have a big reason to care about this, is all. I cared a lot more about last year's rampage at the Seattle Jewish Federation (even though "only" one person was killed), simply because it was a lot closer to home (the killer used to live in Everett, just down the road a bit), and because it was less random (it was Muslim-on-Jewish violence, even though like most shootings, it was more about rage and mental problems than anything else), it was more meaningful.
One more thing.
Why is it that shootings used to always be white guys, but increasingly they are nonwhite guys? The Jewish federation guy, Naveed Haq, was Pakistani; there was Indian Biswanath Halder who killed a student in Ohio in 2003; Robert Flores who fatally shot his professor at Arizona in 2002; Peter Odighizuwa killed some people at Virginia's Appalachian School of Law. Most of the mass and school shootings I can recall since 9/11/2001 were by nonwhites, and most prior to it were by whites.
I don't know that this means anything at all. It's just kinda weird. I remember comedians years ago joking about how mass shooters were always white guys, and that's just not the case anymore.
OK, one more one more thing.
Alberto Gonzales' testimony for tomorrow was postponed because of the shooting. That makes me think Karl Rove had something to do with it. DYKR!!!!
I have a related "ask pudge" (Score:1)
population shift (Score:2)
i think a lot of people empathize with this because while it is far away, a large number of people can relate to college students. many people were college students. many parents have sent their kids off t
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That's the real shame to all this. They were SOOOOO close to being able to protect themselves,
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as for a guess on what is going to happen. i think stuff like this always ends up making the climate more favorable for further legislation to limit or ban firearms. very few people outside of gun o
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On top of that you have to sometimes deal with things like wild animals (or the stupid cityfolk neighbor's dog) hassling your livestock.
This is why the West outside of the big Coastal Cities tends to get a bit pissy about gun control. Even in the big cities you don't have to go too far before you are out i
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my first guess would be that the increase in non-white shooters is due to the much larger percentage of the population that is no longer white. the odds of the person being of some other racial make up have to go up as whites compose a smaller and smaller percentage of the people in the country.
Most of these people are not just nonwhite, but first- or second-generation non-European immigrants. I think there's something more going on than merely strict percentages, but that it is related more perhaps to having too much of an immigrant population increase. Maybe more likely to get bad apples? Or we are failing to properly assimilate? I also forgot to mention the Hmong guy who shot those hunters a couple years ago, he's another one.
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i just got an email this morning that all of our campus crusade staff at v.t. are ok. every time something happens on any college campus, i always wonder, because there's a c
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