Just an update on how things are going for my BFF, the Virginia Citizens' Defense League and its ridiculous ilk.
Yesterday, victims of last year's Virginia Tech shooting -- the ones who, you know, survived -- and their supporters held a rally at the state's Capitol to push for a gun control bill being proposed by the governor. The bill is almost comical in its obvious good sense: It would essentially prevent criminals and the mentally ill from buying weapons at gun shows.
Needless to say, the thought of any restriction at all sends the schoolyard bullies in the "gun enthusiast" crowd into apoplectic fits; they showed up to stage a counter-demonstration, making the tired and completely ass-backward argument that more guns, not fewer, is the answer to the violence.
The confrontation provided a few predictably unfortunate moments.
According to the Associate Press:
"At one point, Jeff Knox, director of operations of the Manassas-based Firearms Coalition, approached survivor Colin Goddard and said students could have stopped student Seung-Hui Cho's rampage if they had been allowed to carry guns on campus.
'I would have stopped him,' Knox said. 'Because when I went to school, I carried a gun. It was legal; I did it.'
Goddard, a Virginia Tech senior who was shot four times in the April 16 massacre, was taken aback, then said: 'I feel sorry for you -- the fact that you feel you need to protect yourself in every situation.'"
Goddard's reaction was far more restrained than mine would've been if I were nursing four bullet wounds and now faced some paranoid asshole trying to drill it into me that I could've prevented my own suffering and the deaths of my friends had I just been willing to shoot back. Of course he's also missing the point slightly. This particular brand of gun-worshipper doesn't feel the need to protect himself -- because he knows the likelihood of ever coming face-to-face with a legitimate reason to draw and fire his weapon in self-defense is practically nil. The truth is, he wants to shoot; he dreams of that moment when he happens to be someplace where he can plug a crazed shitbag like Seung-Hui Cho (and make no mistake -- in the testosterone-fueled fantasy of the guy I'm talking about, the rampaging criminal he's forced to get all Wyatt Earp on is always either an immigrant or some other form of interloping vermin, if you get my drift).
Which leads me to say it one more time: Anyone who thinks like that is the last fucking person you want walking around armed.
(Deus Ex Malcontent: Blow Back/6.21.07)
(Deus Ex Malcontent: Automatics for the People/5.18.07)
(Deus Ex Malcontent: And All That Could Have Been/4.19.07)
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