“30 Dead and Counting!”
The media has a new story, and they’re milking it for all the ratings they can get. Wolf Blitzer stands in front of a four-screen video wall that rotates images of wounded students and cops standing behind trees instead of moving toward the gunmen. He plays an from-the-seen audio and counts down the gunshots aloud and with a counter projected for the audience to follow along. He does this twice inside the span of an hour.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush says he’s outraged and saddened, but you will not see any call from him for legislation to finally outlaw handguns in America, and if the Congress actually works for the country and passes such legislation, Bush would veto the bill. Of course, many people in America would rejoice and yell “hallelujah” if legislation passed that all American’s should carry handguns to prevent such massacres.
This is the world of American media married with politics, both whoring for money: t.v. and cable news need to sell toothpaste and deodorant ads; politicians need National Rifle Association money to get re-elected. This is the world of American high property taxes and outrageous college tuitions, yet Virginia Tech can’t pay for a security detail that protects its students from an enraged gunman. This is the world of American amnesia, where such massacres have occurred over and over and over, yet government, schools, Congress, and John Q. Public still refuse to learn, implement, and protect.
Now we wait for the spin. Spin from the local police, spin from campus security, spin from Virginia Tech administration, spin from Congress members who must be working the phones now to get themselves in front of a camera, and spin from the White House. They have to. There is opportunity here. Some of them have careers to move higher, others stand with blood on their hands.
The killer is to blame for this outrage. He murdered the people at Virginia Tech. Perhaps nothing could have prevented him from committing murder. Someone, however, could have stopped him from murdering so many people. There is no excuse. This fact is the epicenter from which all the spin will radiate. With all of that, here is the worst part: the students, teachers, and staff of Virginia Tech will be drowned within the vortex of this spin.
Meanwhile, 30 people are dead, 29 people are wounded. One murderer ended his own life.
Pass the potatoes, Alice.
YourMessias wrote:
Not being allowed to carry weapons anyway, the discussion over here is kind of different. People try to find reasons for the “why”. Why does a guy kill himself and others?
The discussion, however, is not a real one, in my opinion. People (read: politicians) try to find something or someone that is “guilty”. Right now, they tend to blame computer games. Some, those being not as short-sighted and stupid as those blaming computer games, even asked a little further (for example: why it is that easy to get yourself armed? [over here]).
Not knowing the way such topics are discussed in the States, I’d like to know whether people seriously think about prohibiting handguns and other arms.
Personally, I don’t see a point in being allowed to carry a gun.
I think avoiding such miseries is very difficult. Stopping someone that starts shooting at random people around him/her by using the gun I might be carrying myself might be an effective method. Nevertheless, I think that it is way more dangerous to allows about everyone to be armed.
On the long run it should be a goal to prevent people from considering murder and suicide a solution to their problems.
I confess it rather is a utopian goal, though.
Posted 17 Apr 2007 at 9:41 am ¶
Mark Beyer wrote:
In some polls going back 10 years or so, there have been as many as 60% of people across the country who wanted handguns outlawed. Not a single member of Congress spoke for such action. They are all pretty much whores to political action committees, the lobby groups as you know that put up big dollars as campaign contributions…and can easily do so to an opponent if you don’t do as they ask. Yes, this is the land of the free, where, as Bill Mahre once said, “Having 30 different kinds of mustard on the supermarket shelf is not freedom.”
Posted 17 Apr 2007 at 11:22 am ¶
YourMessias wrote:
That kind of sounds as if it was part of a bad movie that digged up yet another conspiracy theory. Haha.
This, however, makes the fact that it actually isn’t a bad joke even worse.
I don’t know, do you have referendums on such things? Or were they possible at least?
I am refering to the German word “Volksentscheid” here, which means that everyone (that could vote) is asked about an issue and the “Volk” therefore decides. It is like an election… This totally leaves the politicans out - well, they can vote. But that’s about it.)
(I don’t know if it is the right word.
Or would the federal system allow prohibitions in certain States at least?
Posted 17 Apr 2007 at 11:36 am ¶
Mark Beyer wrote:
American referendums are held locally (perhaps some states have them), but never at the federal level. The Founders didn’t really trust people any more than they trusted government, if that makes any sense. However, in USA local and state law cannot supersede national law. In other words, local governments can create all sorts of hurdles to buy guns, but they cannot ban them outright. Some states have hugely strict gun purchase and control laws, and others, like Alabama and Virginia, you can virtually buy a enough guns to fill a pickup truck with as little as a signature and the right amount of cash.
Posted 17 Apr 2007 at 12:05 pm ¶
YourMessias wrote:
I guessed it to be like that. Thank you for the information.
It’s kind of sad to see how bluntly such polls (like the one you mentioned) are ignored as long as politicians benefit from it.
Posted 17 Apr 2007 at 12:18 pm ¶