Student describes shooting spree
After reading a number of blogs and comments on news forums today, I find myself embarrassed to be from the UK.
The hectoring and lecturing on US gun laws is bad enough. Most of us from "over here" can never really get a handle on the gun control argument as we do not have a history where guns played the same role as they did in the USA.
In any case, do people really believe that even a total ban would have prevented this or previous massacres? Do they imagine that someone who is prepared to carry out such acts would have handed in his weapons if they had been banned (say) a year ago? Or that he wouldn't have obtained one on the black market?
We have laws against carrying knives - it doesn't seem to be preventing gangs of youths in our cities from stabbing one another!
But the above may just be ignorance. What is quite disgusting is the almost gleeful comments that attempt to link the situation in Iraq in particular or Bush's presidency in general to yesterday's murders.
I find it personally sad how much of this comes from bloggers that would clearly describe themselves as liberal or left wing - the area of politics that I have spent most of my life in sympathy with.
One of my memories of 9/11 is of groups of Palestinian women dancing in the streets as news of the destruction of the twin towers reached them. I am saddened to find that some of today's comments come from people who are little better; and who certainly should know better.
They should be thoroughly ashamed.
For goodness sake, they were just kids!
My heart and my prayers go out to all caught up in this dreadful tragedy.
God bless you all...and somehow bring you peace.
university massacre killings shootings
"virginia tech"
1 comments:
I'm also disappointed by the reaction over here. European anti-Americanism has got so strong that now it seems almost anything bad that happens in or to the US is met with a consensus view that, somehow, they had it coming.
Cast your mind back to hurricane Katrina. How much time passed before media comments emerged to the effect that "well, if they will pollute the earth so much..." (I also think what we're doing to our planet is shocking - but that really wasn't the appropriate response at the time). You're right to draw comparisons with reactions in some parts to 9/11.
As for the politics behind it; as a casual observer, I find it very easy to see what "the left" is against (the US (obviously), corporations, the church, the monarchy), but very difficult to see what it is for. Diversity? Then let's respect the fact that different countries have different controls on particular items. Probably many Americans find Europe's relative judicial laxness towards illegal drugs incomprehensible. And let's not forget that there's at least one aspect of our firearms situation that almost everyone everywhere else in the world would find bizarre: the British police are, in general, not armed.
Post a Comment