Posted on 04/23/2007 7:36:17 AM PDT by presidio9
Not since 9/11 can I remember a worse week than the one we have just experienced.
This week the death toll in Iraq went even higher; hundreds died as the government prepared to send more American troops into the war zone. Yet I don't remember even a casual conversation about that as the unimaginable tragedy unfolded at Virginia Tech.
Reporters love to cover big stories, but there was no joy in our Washington bureau which carried the biggest part of the load in covering the Virginia Tech horror — for our people, there was only revulsion and a sense of duty that such things must be covered.
It was what happened in the days and hours after the shooting that I found most depressing. In the wake of 9/11, people demanded action. This time it was different.
This time, public officials reacted with despair, even resignation — despair that no one seems to know what to do, resignation that these things are going to happen from time to time as long as guns are available to the mentally deranged, and because powerful forces oppose tightening the gun laws, there is just not much that can be done about it.
This is an enormously complicated subject. There is no magic quick fix, including more gun laws. But Virginia Tech must have shown us one thing: The current safeguards are not working, and unless something changes, it IS only a matter of time until what we saw — or something worse — happens again. The question that keeps running in my mind is: As a people, are we prepared to accept that?
Actually, the U.S Supreme Court has ruled that dorms, along with high school lockers, come with an expectation of privacy the triggers the protection of the Fourth Amendment, making random, warrantless searches illegal. The landlord at Virginia Tech is the state of Virginia, which creates a different releationship than a private landlord would have with its tenants.
“Americans need to get over their love affair with guns”
I think Ben Stein is being quite clever here, since those are almost the exact words of Janet Reno when the 1994 `assault weapons’ ban was passed.
However, unlike your typical preachy pompous liberal, Stein knows that a smarmy, condescending statement like that will only infuriate gun owners into standing up even harder against those who seek to disarm us.
This may not be Ben Stein’s actual view of the right to own guns. He has the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to think upon (shouldn’t we all).
I sensed nothing in his facial expression, tone of voice or attendant language that would suggest he was being other than sincere. I take him at his word.
Every Jew has the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to think upon. Shumer, Feinstein, Boxer, et. are all unimpressed by the lessons taught there. Worse, they will do their best to guarantee that gun owners will be treated to the same luxurious accomodations.
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