Reply #163: IEDs Don't Kill People, PEOPLE Do

[Duppers]

Can you imagine a pro-nuke sign: "Nuclear weapons don't kill people, crazy leaders do" ?


Iraq: I.E.D.s Don't Kill People, PEOPLE Do

by Rosa Brooks

If that sounds like an idiotic and insane thing to say, ask yourself how gun control opponents can continue to make the equivalent claim in the domestic context.

No, hunters, I'm not after your shotguns: keep 'em with my blessing. But how many more school massacres is it going to take before this country figures out that yes, there is a connection between the number of automatic weapons sloshing around, the laws that enable their easy purchase and concealment, and the amount of lethal violence? Sure, you can kill someone with a knife or a shotgun or by squishing them to death under sixteen tons of marshmallows, if you're really bent upon murder-- but without easily concealable automatic and semi-automatic weapons, it's a whole lot harder to kill 30+ people in a few short minutes.

Factoid: fanatical as the Bush Administration is about the right to bear arms-- and opposed as they are to the most common-sense of gun control laws.

One of the very first orders promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was... yes, that's right, an order stating that "no person shall possess, carry, conceal, hide, bury, trade, sell, barter, give or exchange" heavy weapons, defined to include "all weapons firing ammunition larger than 7.62 MM." CPA/Ord/23 May 2003/03 also prohibited the possession of small arms in public places and the carrying of concealed weapons.

Funny, our commitment to bringing freedom to the Iraqis didn't include a commitment to guaranteeing the right of the people to bear any old arms they felt like bearing. On the contrary-- in the Iraqi context, even the Bush Administration readily understood that a society awash with weapons is more likely to see a lot of lethal violence than a society in which deadly weapons are more strictly controlled. Of course, we didn't do a very good job confiscating or controlling weapons and materiel in Iraq, but that's another story....
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2007/04/iraq_ieds_dont_.html





By posting this, I am only helping to stir this heated debate. My feeling on the subject are so mixed. I wish this were a simplistic issue.

My basic mantra on this: I think we need more specific, more stringent gun control through MUCH better BACKGROUND CHECKS. It would be very hypocritical of me to say that I support the elimination of guns altogether because, gulp, I own one.

WHY does anyone own a damn gun? Some reasons are marginally reasonable, some are ridiculous.

I used to work in a very bad environment, bad neighborhood, and my husband insisted that I carry a weapon. That weapon once saved me from being raped! I swear. There are criminals who do not value their fellow man and I did not want to be a victim. Is that not the basic reason any SANE person would possess a weapon? Protection.

However, the present day, too-easy access to weapons ensures that criminals will be better armed. And which party doesn't seem to give a shit about this fact? Do we Dems just want to echo that?

Btw, I am from the south and live in Virginia. I know only one person who'd base their vote on the gun control issue. And I have a son in a Virginia university and my husband knows two of the professor who were killed at Virginia Tech. This is personal for me.


Hats off to the person above who said: Criminals and the mentally ill are, by definition, not part of the "well-regulated militia," and they have no more business owning guns than George W. Bush has sitting in the Oval Office.