Rather eerily, given my post of this morning, a shoot out broke out in the East End of Pittsburgh, in the neighborhood called Stanton Heights, killing three police officers. We express our condolences.
This only goes to show just how deep a problem this is. We have two mass shootings, in two different parts of the country, within twenty-four hours of each other. This is not just a local issue; it is a national issue. The need for a stand against the right wing gun lobby has never been clearer.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
America: Land of the Gunshot Wound
Yesterday, we had yet another bloodbath courtesy of some maniac with a gun. This time it was a Vietnamese immigrant who was pissed off over the fact that he couldn't learn English. His nuanced response: to kill a group of his fellow immigrants.
When the hell are we going to wake up, America? I'm all for liberty, but allowing every maniac in the country to amass their own personal armory is just insane. Rather than considering the "rights" of gun owners and enthusiasts, maybe it's time to start considering the public's right to safety. The interests of the many outweigh the needs-or in this case desires-of the few.
We will no doubt here the usual course of protests from the libertarians citing the Second Amendment and the occasional mass shooting outside of the United States, as in a recent post on Reason's Hit and Run blog noting the coincidence of shootings in Alabama and Germany last month. However, posts like this one always ignore the obvious issue. Germany has this type of thing every few years, while we seem to have them every few weeks, not to mention all the individual shootings.
It's time to stand up for sanity.
When the hell are we going to wake up, America? I'm all for liberty, but allowing every maniac in the country to amass their own personal armory is just insane. Rather than considering the "rights" of gun owners and enthusiasts, maybe it's time to start considering the public's right to safety. The interests of the many outweigh the needs-or in this case desires-of the few.
We will no doubt here the usual course of protests from the libertarians citing the Second Amendment and the occasional mass shooting outside of the United States, as in a recent post on Reason's Hit and Run blog noting the coincidence of shootings in Alabama and Germany last month. However, posts like this one always ignore the obvious issue. Germany has this type of thing every few years, while we seem to have them every few weeks, not to mention all the individual shootings.
It's time to stand up for sanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
