Traditionally, in my infrequent posts here, I try to come up with a title for each post that is, depending on one’s taste in humor, either clever and witty or pathetic and obvious. The goal is to elicit either a chuckle or a groan… I consider either to be a victory.
But as I sit here contemplating what to say about Monday’s bloodbath at Virginia Tech, I just can’t seem to force the Pun Machine (an apparatus to which, I’m convinced, at least a full 2/3 of my mental capacity is dedicated) to crank up and churn out anything suitable. There’s just nothing pun-worthy about the situation.
The gun advocates and the gun control folks were out in droves before the bodies were even counted, pointing blaming fingers at one another while ignoring the fact that the real culprit here was a sick, sick person who decided that his own lack of personal fulfillment was justification for the taking of innocent lives, and decided to handle the work himself rather than the more acceptable method (i.e. achieving high office and then sending other people off to fight an unnecessary war – yes, it’s harsh, but it’s true, and as one blogger pointed out, Iraq suffers two Virginia Techs a day on average.)
The gun control crowd (which I suppose I fall into, in that I favor sane and reasonable controls on who can stop at Wal-mart to pick out a shiny new fully-automatic killing machine loaded with armor-piercing rounds) was quick to assert that America’s gun culture is at fault for this shooting, but I’m not convinced that’s the case in this particular instance. What’s been revealed about the shooter doesn’t, as yet, indicate that he had any history of being a gun nut. In fact, at least one of the firearms he carried was purchased just a few weeks ago. The guy apparently had no criminal history or any other red flags on his record that would have kept him from legally purchasing a weapon even in a state with much stronger gun control laws than Virginia’s.
On the other side, the NRA fans are chiming in with claims that more guns are the solution. Had other students or faculty been armed, they say – and correctly, in my opinion – someone likely would have fired back and stopped the shooting spree earlier on, and even the almost inevitable crossfire and ricochet casualties from the ensuing shoot-out would probably have left fewer dead in its wake than the slaughter on Monday did. The fundamental problem with the philosophy of fighting crime by making firearms ubiquitous is that while it may be possible to nip the occasional mass murder in the bud, the overall body count, I’m convinced, wouldn’t decrease. Instead, the killing would be broken off into more manageable, less news-worthy, bite-sized chunks of powder-burned single- or double-murder goodness. Heat-of-the-moment, crime-of-passion shootings just don’t happen if you need to run home to fetch the pistol in your nightstand, but I wouldn’t want to be the guy assigned to give a Glock-toting co-worker his annual review while he’s fondling his holstered faux penis.
So, having heard from the left and the right (and finding myself in less than total agreement with both sides), I turn now to the fringe elements: the folks who assumed without any factual basis that the attack was carried out by muslim extremists, or that the teaching of evolution is to blame. Those two should be given about as much credence as conspiracy theories that the Busheviks planned this massacre to draw attention away from their current problems, or the idea that dry cleaning chemicals are the real culprit.
(Side note: Yes, I know I said I’d write something for the Blog Against Theocracy weekend, and yes, I know it didn’t happen. So let me use this space to concisely summarize what I would have written: Theocracy = Bad. Separation of Church and State = Good. Overzealous Fanatics = Danger, Will Robinson!)