Check this out. Penn & Teller on Gun Control Warning...strong language and irreverent humor.

 

Some good points, Mike. Most people wouldn't call Bush deranged, either.

Some people who kill other people are judged not guilty by reason of insanity. Others are executed for succombing to rage. Sometimes 'deranged' is a political term. It is easier for the NRA to treat gun users who go awry as aberrations, abnormals, so they don't have to deal with the possibility that anyone could, might in fact kill someone else with his gun. Is one enough, two , three, a dozen? How many do you have to kill to be automatically categorized as deranged? As you say, the lines are not always clear. Otherwise I have no reason to disagree with your assessment. I personally just don't yet know enough about this man to appreciate the state of his mind. Apparently he was functional enough to slip through the cracks and avoid the legal filters that are in place.

 

I heard on the radio today that one of the killer's teachers actually asked (begged) him to see a therapist, as the rage this person had was quite obvious from his writings and demeanor. This teacher went so far as to tutor the killer for a year in order to help.

It makes me wonder that if a handgun wasn't available, would the same tragedy have happened by using a car instead?

The gun debate can continue, but it won't change the fact that this guy was deranged.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's been moving from the right towards the center....even over to the left. Most of the students are from VA and a lot of parents/ families/ friends are going to be looking for SOME kind of action......

What will it be? We may get a preview if there are local elections in fall of 2007

 

I have to agree that the privacy laws have gone too far. There should be some mechanism whereby a teacher or counselor can alert authorities to a potentially dangerous person.

As a number of wise folks have observed, it's hard to kill so many people in a premeditated fashion with a knife, a machete, or an automobile.

 

If the automobile has a trunk full of amonium nitrate fertilizer it is.

 

I could talk about all the ways that people could be killed that would be easy to do, but feel it's frankly not appropriate.

FWIW, I don't think that most gun owners have Charleton Heston's "They can take my gun when they pry it out of my cold hands" mentality. I think that most gun owners resent further government intrusion into their lives, especially when they feel that they have a right to protect themselves with a firearm.

Unwanted gov't intrusion is a blanket that many people find themselves under at different times (especially tax time!), and guns are one of the most visual manifestations.

Big gov't. Small gov't. And are we going to add gov't based on the actions of a madman?

edit--found a story about the teacher:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3048108&page=1

 

Well, we sure as heck added a lot of big government based on one terrorist incident.

 

It wasn't a question of the privacy laws. The facutly was alerted (the authorities might have been also). It was more a question of not being able to do anything because no crime had been committed.

The professor did request that Cho go for counseling, but they couldn't force him to go if he didn't want to go.

 

That is true, anything is possible, but most likely if he didn't have access to a gun, significantly fewer people would have died.