Posted on 03/22/2005 10:53:46 AM PST by Dan from Michigan
Minnesota School Massacre Latest Example of the Human Toll of America's Love Affair with Guns
Shooter's Willingness to Commit Suicide Demonstrates Futility of Deterrence, Restricting Access to Firearms is the Only Way to Prevent Future Tragedies
Washington, D.C.Yesterday's mass shooting at a Minnesota high school in which a lone shooter killed nine and wounded more than a dozen before taking his own life was the worst school shooting since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where two students killed 13 and wounded another 23 before taking their own lives.
In the wake of this most recent shooting, Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center (VPC) states, "America must face the fact that we have a love affair with guns that exacts a tremendous and unacceptable cost in human lives lost. Mass shootings like that at Red Lake High School are the future for America's children until policymakers decide it's time to enact real gun control. Other countries have found the solution to mass shootings, and it consists of severe restrictions on the availability of specific classes of firearms, such as handguns and assault weapons."
Noting that, as was the case at Columbine, the Minnesota high school shooter was prepared to die in order to perpetrate the shooting, Rand adds, "There is simply no way the criminal justice system or a series of security measuressuch as the guard and metal detectors present at Red Lake High Schoolcan prevent a shooter determined to kill and willing to die."
The shooting at Red Lake High School is the latest mass murder-suicide to occur in the United States and follows, by less than two weeks, a murder-suicide at a Wisconsin hotel that resulted in eight dead. These shootings, like the vast majority of such incidents, were perpetrated with a gun. A study conducted by the VPC in 2002 found that guns were used in 95 percent of all murder-suicides and estimated that at least 1,300 lives are lost each year to murder-suicide. (For a copy of the study, American Roulette: The Untold Story of Murder-Suicide in the United States, as well as gun violence information for Minnesota, please see www.vpc.org).
Yes, only law enforcement and the military need firearms.
We'll be much safer when all civilians are disarmed.
Followed up by the always predictable...'It's Bush's fault.'
A gun didn't kill these people - THE SHOOTER KILLED THESE PEOPLE - AND HIS WEAPON OF CHOICE WAS A GUN.
End of story!
I must have missed their missive on America's love affair with cars, which exacts a tremendous & higher cost in lives than guns.
Oh, WAIT.....I mentioned facts, sorry. Never mind.
Perhaps the gun came from a broken home, or a public school?
That's why my wife & I home school our guns. They're much more law abiding and tolerant that way.
Sickening and typical.
Anyone who is legally permitted to vote should be permitted to own a gun -- mental illness or not. There are certainly inherent risks in that approach, but there's no way in hell a person who is deemed "mentally unfit" to own a gun should have any say in who serves in my government.
I guess the fact that the kid was a Goth, dressed in black and frequented Nazi/skinhead type websites and used the monikker of "Angel of Death" has little bearing on this case...SSZ
Because the shooting happened at a Native American reservation, and minority-on-minority crimes get little, if any MSM exposure.
Now if the shooting happened in suburban Minneaoplis, then there'd be widespread coverage.
>>This may sound crazy, but I wonder how many would have died if this kid had walked into this school of 300 kids where all of them were armed.<<
An armed society is a polite society.
What about our love affair with cars? 43,000 dead per year but liberals won't touch this one. What hypocrites!
You know, some of you gun nuts have the habit of looking at history and current events through its muzzle, rather than its breech.
Dear VPC.......
.....had that security guard , principal, janitors, or teachers been allowed to bear arms if they so choose the little murdering whacked out POS you ignore would have been dropped in his tracks before he could kill anyone else.
Paper laws still don't stop lead projectiles......or criminal acts.
FNC's Martha McCallum (?) is all toothy & goofy about how "many guns" this poor child was allowed to gain access to........stupid assed presstitutes !
Not to me it doesn't. This kid had a father that whacked himself and a mother in nursing home. He was ripe for the sick crap that these web sites serve up. If I were the NRA, I would publicly condemn these hate sites and seek to have them considered XXX rated on the net. Children, minors, do not have First or Second Amendment rights.
Go back and look through all of my posts in the 4+ years I've been here on FR, and ask yourself if I come across as the kind of person who really gives a sh!t what goes on in the mind of the "general public."
One of the major factors in the Minnesota school massacre yesterday was that someone in the "general public" got this brilliant idea to use unarmed security guards as a means to prevent school violence. There isn't damn thing anyone is going to do to prevent these incidents when you're dealing with that kind of idiotic mindset.
I'll also point out that school violence of this sort was nonexistent before the phrase "mental health organization" was ever used in public discourse. You think that's just a coincidence?
The kid doing the shooting was 17, unable to vote or buy a gun. How do you reconcile that with your theory that if someone is crazy enough to vote, than they're crazy enough to own a gun?
Ward Churchill had more to do with this than the NRA.
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