Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 4

To quote my brother, “Jesus Christ! The bodies are not cold yet and this has become a political argument about gun control?”

There has been a lot of stuff flying about in the right and left blogosphere trying to turn the actions of a lone nutcase into some kind of political symbol. I was working at home most of the day, and, when I do that, I stay out of the blogosphere (or, frankly, I wouldn’t earn my hourly rate).

As I said in the comments to my initial post on this topic, this proves nothing about gun control, one way or the other. Someone who is willing to die in order to kill, frankly, cannot be stopped from killing.

It says nothing about the University’s response to the initial shooting. They had two dead and a shooter who appeared to have fled. If you look back over similar cases that have been in the news, whether in the workplace, the campus, or the school, someone who goes on a killing spree goes on a killing spree, all at once. He doesn’t disappear for two hours and then come back for more.

As far as I am concerned, the police probably thought, with good reason, that they had a “Law and Order” case on their hands, where what was needed detective work and pursuit, and saw–again, with good reason–no cause to incite panic across the community with a lockdown.

(And if I read later that some ambulance chaser has sued Tech or Blacksburg or the Virginia State Police over this, I think I shall puke.)

So to those who think this will “reopen the dialog on gun control”–sorry, wrong case. They would do better to look at what happens daily on the streets of Philadelphia, where the homicide rate so far this year has outstripped the Julian date.

And to those who think letting the students pack heat would have ended this sooner, I suggest they learn a little about guns–they are noisy, messy, dangerous, and difficult to use skillfully–and stop masturbating to visions of the Man with No Name.

And to those who think that, somehow, the victims should have tried to overpower this nutcase who came after them with guns a-blazin’, well, John Cole and Phillybits said it better than I.*

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*John Cole is a Pajamas Media blogger. Phillybits wouldn’t be caught dead in Pajamas Media (he appears from time to time on Kos; I don’t know whether he actually wears pajamas, and, frankly, I don’t want to know). It says something when they agree.