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Posted: 4/19/2007 1:05:35 PM EST
Instead of dozens of threads, it might be easier to track them all in one place.

I'll start with this one:

http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/editorials/stories/2007/04/19/Yang_ART_04-19-07_A8_I26E4KS.html

Gun limits would make rampage less likely
Thursday,  April 19, 2007 3:34 AM

Stricter gun control is needed. Without the gun, the killer at the Virginia Tech campus is nothing but a loner who might not have been able to inflict big damage so easily.

Some argued guns don't kill, people do. This argument is total nonsense. The government regulates cars and drivers. And the United Nations forbids proliferation of nuclear weapons. The 21st century is no pioneer era. There is no need to own a gun to defend oneself that way anymore. The gun is designed to kill.

The semiautomatic is truly a weapon of mass destruction. A knife can kill only one or two people in quite a struggle. A gun can kill many in a very short time. There should be no sale and no ownership of guns in this country.

As for hunters, they should rent their rifles or shotguns through an authorized sports agency.


J.C. YANG
Columbus
Link Posted: 4/19/2007 1:08:56 PM EST
[#1]
Second Amendment kills dozens in attack

April 19, 2007

Second Amendment kills dozens in attack
Fewer guns equals more lives. Period.
By Adri Mehra

the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, drafted in 1789, reads:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

But what happens when the very "security of a free State" is directly infringed by "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms?"

That, my friends, is known as a contradiction in terms, and in the science of logic, a statement that goes on to deny itself becomes inherently false.

Case in point:

Last month, Virginia Tech senior Cho Seung-Hui spent a month's rent or so ($571) on an entirely legal 9mm-caliber Glock 19 handgun at Roanoke Firearms in Roanoke, Va., about 40 minutes east of the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg.

Just what kind of deadly weapon did an angry young English major like Mr. Cho have at his disposal?

The slightly larger Glock 22 - so named for the number of bullets that its magazine can contain - is the single most popular police sidearm used in the United States, according to years of national survey data.

Glock's Web site states that their pistols are "in use by over 65 percent of law enforcement," and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issues every one of its agents a Glock 22 or 23 upon graduation from its academy. American security patrols in Iraq also favor similar Glocks.

While at Roanoke Firearms last month, Cho also picked up 50 rounds of ammunition. Fortunately for him, 9mm cartridges are inexpensive and great for target practice, which he intended to get on the fly, one supposes.

See, what's great about America is that if you want to go on a killing spree, all you need are three forms of identification - a state I.D., a bank check and a phone bill, for example - and, after a minute-long instant background check, you're good to go, son.

Voila! A mass murderer is newly minted! You don't even have to tell the gun shop dude (much less the state of Virginia) why you need the 9mm, or 50 bullets! Let the bodies hit the floor, right?

Thirty-three of those bodies, including that of Mr. Cho himself, were found dead in at least four buildings on the Virginia Tech campus Monday morning.

"There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg.

Authorities also found a Walther .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun at the scene - another totally legal firearm known for its accuracy and ease of operation.

Did the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protect the 32 innocent Americans gunned down this week? Or did the long-since-antiquated law fail them, and render them nothing more than breathing target practice for a pissed-off civilian?

As we sift through the complexities of the human response to such a monstrous act, there appear to be three fundamental conclusions most of us reach.

The first and simplest reaction is that such inconceivable acts of violence are, sadly, impossible to prevent or predict with any degree of certainty. This, I feel, is the least constructive perspective to have, and is frighteningly defeatist.

The second reaction is that the shootings could have been prevented by more stringent gun control laws, i.e. the banning of nonservice civilian handguns. This is to me the most sensible and inevitable conclusion one can make in the wake of such a bloodbath.

The third and most dangerous reaction is the pseudo-libertarian response that a more-armed citizenry could have better defended themselves against such an attack.

The first and third reactions are immediate gratification models that defer the confrontation of reality in order to serve Freud's pleasure principle - the drive to feel good now instead of feeling even better later by avoiding a little concept called foresight.

Sure, it feels great to think that if only one of the students had been packing heat, he or she could have saved the day by taking out the gunman before he unleashed his torrent of carnage upon so many helpless victims.

But not everyone is John McClane from "Die Hard," nor should they be in an open, free, peaceable society.

The fact is, last time I checked, we weren't (yet) living in a police state, yet we are apparently a nation of laws, although one of them regularly kills nearly 30,000 of its own people (roughly half are homicides and half suicides) every year, compared to only 163 firearm-related deaths in the United Kingdom in 2003, according to the Centers for Disease Control and British government figures.

Why do we have tens of thousands needlessly die each year from guns, and the Brits lose less than two hundred?

The answer: Handguns have been banned in the UK since 1997, while there are more than 200 million guns in America, according to Reuters and the National Rifle Association.

In a culture where 34 percent of Americans own firearms, men, women and children will continue to die facing the barrel of a gun.

It is sad that the innocent majority have to brutally suffer for the trigger-happy minority's mindless "right to bear arms."

Thirty-two bright young college kids are dead because of two devices that were designed to kill them. It's time we shot down the Second Amendment. Our lives depend on it, just as theirs did.

Adri Mehra welcomes comments at [email protected].
Link Posted: 4/19/2007 1:14:21 PM EST
[#2]
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=592569

Posted: April 17, 2007
VA TECH MASSACRE
Our worst social crisis

The Virginia Tech massacre illustrates the lack of progress during the past 100 years in solving our worst social problem: gun violence. It has only gotten worse because guns have become more deadly and more plentiful.


Why the failure? For society as a whole, the answer is a lack of will. Freedom for guns is more important than freedom from gun violence. Films, TV dramas and video games portraying gun violence are more prominent than programs teaching tolerance and responsibility.

The fiercely patriotic National Rifle Association teaches that private guns protect freedom. Its propaganda maintains paranoia among members and admirers, essential for muscle as America's most powerful political lobby.

Simulated violence peddled as entertainment attracts males ages 14 to 28, valued customers to advertisers. This group is also most prone to violence, especially with guns. The violence-as-entertainment industry recycles real violence as adventure, which inspires more real violence.

There is a response to such folly: nationally, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Million Moms March in 2000 in answer to the Columbine massacre; at state and local level, the Wisconsin-Anti-Violence Effort lobbies for responsible gun laws. However, the funding and political clout of these organizations is small compared to that of the gun lobby.

Yes, blame the gunmen, but also blame society and government as facilitators.

Frank N. Egerton
Racine

----

Real loss of freedom

Tuesday's news abroad regarding the Virginia Tech shooting was all about gun control issues. The BBC halted its own reporting to air e-mail from around the world criticizing our gun lust in the United States. At the same time, our media exploited the rating potential of the event by showcasing the needless loss without any real scrutiny of what allowed this to happen.

In the U.S., we stand willing to lose 30,000 to gun violence annually. We attack the Brady bill, assault rifle ban and countless other handgun control laws while emphasizing the importance of conceal and carry laws. In the end, we have the highest death toll, gun ownership, gun production and gun lobby in the world.

The U.S. Constitution was written before mass media culture and high-tech weaponry. We're holding on to some outdated sentiment from a time long past allowing real losses of freedom to run out of control.

We cannot allow one American's hatred and anger to fuel such destructive rage. The fear, panic and loss from Virginia Tech yesterday doesn't feel like freedom. It's impossible to criminalize behavior that ends in a suicide, so there must be other measures taken in favor of stricter gun control. It's a no-brainer.

Doug Cheever
Milwaukee
Link Posted: 4/19/2007 3:25:44 PM EST
[#3]
If you want addresses for who to write to, see this thread:
ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=568349

It contains the email addresses or web forms for most of the influential newspapers and magazines.
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