Guns Don't Kill People, Alabamans and Germans Do

Why disarm potential victims?

Yet again, in what seems like a trend that will never end, we've had two more cases of a gunman spraying bullets into crowds of innocent unarmed citizens.

In "Motive unclear in Alabama shooting spree," Reuters reports:

Authorities grappled on Wednesday for the reason a 27-year-old Alabama man shot dead 10 people, including his mother, before killing himself after a gunbattle with police and a car chase down a rural highway.

Mass shootings have become more frequent in the United States in recent years.

Guns are widely available for purchase in the United States, a country that prides itself on the right to own weapons for self defense and hunting.

From all the media hand-wringing about Americans insisting on their right to keep and bear arms, you'd think the problem is a wholly American one.  Not so!  Reuters also posted "Teenage gunman kills 15 at German school" which said:

A 17-year old gunman went on a shooting spree at his former school in southwest Germany Wednesday, killing up to 15 people before dying himself in a shootout with police, authorities said.

Germany has strict weapons laws, with gunholders having to fulfill certain criteria on age and weapons expertise to obtain a license for firearms. [emphasis added]

It's about time the anti-gun crowd realized that gun control is not the answer, not even in Germany, where "strict weapons laws" didn't prevent someone from getting his hands on a gun.  Liberals steadfastly refuse to admit it, but they're creating "victim disarmament zones" where unarmed victims have no way to defend themselves.

Where do you find the most victims of gun violence?  Just those places where guns are most strictly regulated and least likely to be found - Washington D.C., New York City, schools and universities, and Democratic party headquarters.

If anyone in the vicinity had been armed, neither of these gunmen could have killed as many as they did.  How many more innocents must die before we understand that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away?

No matter how much money we spend, cops can't be everywhere.  How hard is it to understand that if guns are outlawed - well, where guns are outlawed - only outlaws have guns?

The only way to defend against foreign or domestic terrorists who can strike any time, anywhere, is for us to be prepared to defend ourselves.

Read other Scragged.com articles by Hobbes or other articles on Society.
Reader Comments
Another important point is that the Brady campaign used the phrase "SKS assault rifle" in both of their press releases. The SKS is a semi-automatic carbine without a pistol grip that feeds from a 10-rounds non-detachable magazine and has no fully-automatic cousins (by definition, an assault rifle is select-fire; the anti-gun lobby has merely stolen the phrase) and is hence not an assault rifle under any of their old definitions. The Brady Campaign has shown their true colors for once and for all (for anyone naive enough to doubt it) - they want to ban all semiautomatic firearms - when they are done demonizing the AR-15 and the Mini-14 carbines, they will merely move on to the SKS and other guns, slowly broadening their definitions of "assault weapon" to include any semiautomatic weapon. And when they're done there...?
March 12, 2009 9:56 AM
you imply that people from alabama and germany kill people
mean, not true and offensive
i can say that texans steal oil
March 12, 2009 12:14 PM
I think his point was that anybody, from anywhere, can commit crimes, and so we need to be able to defend ourselves. Nothing special about Alabamans or Germans.
March 15, 2009 9:20 AM
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