About Virginia Tech

[redneckgaijin]

This morning, while driving my grandmother into town for her grocery shopping, I heard something on ESPN that FINALLY said about this massacre that has not been said (or not loudly enough) about previous massacres.

Put simply: you can't prevent lone nuts from killing people. That's one of the costs of living in a free society. Y'see, murderous lunatics, or more accurately potential murderous lunatics look and act just like everybody else... until they don't. Scientists and profilers have studied mass murderers and spree killers for decades, even centuries now, and they still don't have a clue what causes a normal individual to suddenly change into a killer. They understand how a killer's mind works- total absence of empathy for others being the main unifying factor- but they can't predict when a person's going to snap, they can't say what causes a person to snap, and thus they can't prevent a person from snapping.

I know that the urge is strong to find something to do to prevent things like Virginia Tech, or the Killeen Luby's, or the UT Tower sniper from happening again. The thing is, the one thing that can be done has been done. This particular killer will never kill anyone again. As for future killers, no scientific test exists that can tell a potential killer apart from a normal human being. The only way to provide any real security against such an unknown, unpredictable threat is to eradicate all freedom of action, property and choice and mandate the daily activities of all citizens down to the second- and that's not a society any of us wants to live in.

As for gun control... well, I put it to you this way. Virginia Tech had a firm and inflexible no-firearms, no-knives, no-weapons-of-any-kind law. It didn't help the 32 innocent victims. I do not say that, had any or all of those victims been armed, that they would be alive today- nobody can know that, and considering they were all taken by surprise it's doubtful. They would, however, have had at least a chance to fight back... and since the ban did no good whatever, there's no good reason to maintain it. Gun bans are, as a general rule, ineffective in deterring violent crime or reducing the violence of crime, and they're certainly ineffective at preventing shootings of this kind.

But even if you don't buy that, consider: massacres of this kind happen no more often than once every five years on average. Even in this country, with three hundred million people and four firearms for each man, woman and child in the USA, only one person listens to the evil little voices in his head every five years or so. You are more at risk from drowning with your head in a paint bucket than from somebody going postal. Don't base your actions, or the actions of government, on the sensationalism of one incredible tragedy; base it on the actual risks involved, plus the proven past effectiveness of the proposed remedy.

My prayers go out to the families of the dead, especially the family of the shooter. What happened at Virginia Tech was a senseless tragedy.

But don't give this one tragedy more importance than it's worth.

After all, the next tragedy is just around the corner, and odds are very good it will have nothing to do with guns, colleges, or anything else associated with yesterday.

It'll be unpredicted, unpredictable, and unstoppable... just like yesterday was.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

There's a hole in your hypothesis big enough to drive the QEII thru, and it runs like this: by your own argument, you cannot use the behavior of crazy people as a yardstick for normal ones.

You claim that the gun ban on campus "did no good at all" because it failed to prevent this crazy-person event. But this isn't a binary situation, where someone is either perfectly sane or batshit crazy; there are infinite gradations on that scale. What you don't know, and can't find out without removing the ban for a period of some years and keeping stats, is how many not-crazy-people injuries and deaths it prevents, by virtue of there simply not being a gun within easy reach when somebody gets really pissed. Multiply by some significant factor at any event where alcohol is involved.

Are you willing to have people you know and love be part of the control for that experiment? I wouldn't be.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Last point first: under current conditions the "control" would be retaining current restrictive gun laws, and I definitely would prefer myself and my family to be in the experimental "reduced regulation" set.

In any case, the experiment has been done, after a fashion. In 2005 the federal government- specifically the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms- did a study comparing gun crimes prior to the Brady Act to gun crimes during the Brady Act. This study took into account overall trends in crime, local regulations, etc. to focus solely on the effect of Brady mandated background checks and, while enforced, waiting periods. Result: the study found that the Brady Act had no positive effect. Increased gun restrictions and bans did nothing to reduce gun violence.

A similar study can quite easily be done by comparing the per capita gun violence stats prior to any local firearms ban and per capita gun violence post ban.

There are instances where certain freedoms are yielded by the individual so that other freedoms may be protected. There is a two part test to determine whether such a loss of liberty is justifiable. First, the loss of that freedom must be an unavoidable necessity; second, the method used to take away that freedom must be effective in protecting other freedoms. Where it comes to the right to bear arms, the necessity is endlessly moot, but the effectiveness of gun bans and prohibitive restrictions- rather, the utter lack of effectiveness- is not.

And if banning something doesn't work to protect people, then the ban should be lifted.

The Shooting

[kyllein.livejournal.com]

Last things first: Bans are the darlings of the "Socially Consious" set, in that they allow them to say "we've done something" without having to do anything other than make yet even more rules-while seated comfortably.
Bans accomplish nothing other than letting the Authorities avoid thinking and dealing with things on their own merits.
Would a stronger set of bans have prevented the killings? No. The killer brought the firearms into the Campus from an off-campus site.
Rule breakers tend not to obey rules.
I question that this was unpredictable: the Nooze has brought forth a number of "really worried people" who did nothing. Doing nothing is the same as helping the killer prepare for his murderous spree.
He's out of the picture; his parents will have to deal with this for the rest of their lives...and probably somebody will sue them for something...
He was a NUT. He gave Warnings! Nobody did anything at all...
So, it'll be the Gun's fault... (can't go around accepting responsibility, can we?)
The situation that caused it- won't be addressed. The obvious signs- won't become warning points. The people who did nothing- will keep on doing it.
Nothing will change, except for the volume of Jaw-noise. It, and Hand-wringing will increase. Betch'a.
Clues were offered-and ignored. Maybe if this were a weekly occurance, somebody would really try to fix the problem; instead of just making speeches (the Nooze again). But Kris is right; this happens about every four of five years (big enough to make the papers) and in between, everybody goes back to sleep.
And to be blunt: I'd rather be Shot; than either Hacked to death or Bludgeoned to death. It would hurt less, and be over quicker.
He gave such clear Warnings!

[(Anonymous)]

I'd only like to say I agree in that gun bans do nothing but prevent honest (honest-ly dead victims in this case) people from defending themselves.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

I missed this in my LJ trawling of the day -- which was spotty at best, as this was a busy day. As you can tell from my websnark essay from today, I pretty much agree with you here.

So, you know. Dude.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting endorsement, since I thought my personal pro-gun bias was pretty clear in what I wrote.

Thanks, though.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

You'll note that while I at least created an expectation when I mentioned my left leaning ways, I was careful not to lay out an opinion on gun control in my own essay. My point was that situations like Virginia Tech are not what should guide legislation or set the tone of the debate -- it is a passionate discussion about a madman's actions, and there is no legislation on Earth that would defend against a madman's actions.

Which is, as I said, essentially agreeing with what you said. ;)