I was not suggesting it be compulsory that the unqualified be armed. <g>

Krauthammer very much worth reading today. He has a way of cutting through the posturing and the drama and actually thinking clearly. In part :

"It did not take long for the perennial debate about gun control to break out, preceded by the inevitable scolding and clucking abroad about America's lax gun laws.

It is true that with far stricter gun laws, Cho Seung Hui might have had a harder time getting the weapons and ammunition needed to kill so relentlessly. Nonetheless, we should have no illusions about what laws can do. There are other ways to kill in large numbers, as Timothy McVeigh demonstrated. Determined killers will obtain guns no matter how strict the laws. And stricter controls could also keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens using them in self-defense. The psychotic mass murder is rare; the armed household burglary is not.

If we are going to look for a political issue here, the more relevant is not gun control but psychosis control. We decided a half a century ago that our more eccentric and, indeed, crazy fellow citizens would not be easily locked in asylums. It was a humane decision, but with the inevitable consequence that some who really need quarantine are allowed to roam the streets." Charles Krauthammer - April 20, 2007




>On the assumption that everybody there had been armed, maybe there would have been 1 or maybe 2 people with the skill to use the guns properly. How do you stop the others from pulling their guns and 'blazing away'. I have to wonder how may people would die from freindly fire in such a situation.
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>I'm also not sure that simply throwing up our arms and declaring that there's nothing we can do about bad guys getting guns is really a great response either. There was nothing whatever in U.S. law (afaik) that would have been able to prevent this guy from getting a gun. There should be. The U.S. (Canada too, for that matter) doesn't take this attitude toward drugs, even though we can't seem to stop people from getting drugs either. Why then guns? In fact, U.S. law seems to go out of its way to make sure the way is paved for wackos to buy guns. I see that as a problem.
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>>but the point is there are good guys and bad guys. when bad guys have guns it is nice if there is a good guy with a gun and the skill to use it effectively. No one advocates 'blazing away' but guns are not mystical. The shoot where you point them, much as code does what you say. And there is a skill level involved in employing them correctly. One good guy, one firearm, one shot could have ended this tragedy much sooner. The hysterical image of all the students pulling guns and suddenly randomly blazing away doesn't really negate the arguement that the problem is not guns - it is bad guys having guns when there is not a properly trained and armed deterent.
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>>>Of course, we're not talking about a cop bar. We're talking about a bunch of kids pulling guns and blazing away. I have no idea if the death toll would have been less or more.
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>>>>>>>http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3045574
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>>>>>>The only thing that would make me feel more foolish that carrying a weapon and not needing it is needing a weapon and not having it.
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>>>>>>How many times do you think he had to reload? And in all that time no one was proximate with lethal force and the will to use it.
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>>>>>So then, I take it you feel things were much better controlled and people were much safer back in the old west when everybody carried a gun and was happy to use it? The thought of going back to that ideology sends chills up my spine. Frankly, I'd stay out of shopping malls forever if everybody started carrying a gun.