Reply #63: why is it?

[iverglas]

Why is it if the reverse of this question is so easily answered is the converse case without merit or reason and a stupid question to boot?

Well gosh. It just must be because some people have rearview crystal balls, and some don't. Ya figure?


Let's what if Dunblaine.

Okay!!

What if a single teacher would have had a weapon?

And what if three more psychopaths in the vicinity of the school had had handguns???

(Links to the Luby's reports)

And what if there had been three people with handguns in the restaurant, and they pulled them out and started shooting as soon as the bad guy did ... and they missed a coupla times and hit a coupla the people who -- in this alternate universe we call the real world -- the bad guy didn't hit, who are still alive today?? Or even: what if he saw one of them pulling out that handgun and shot him/her dead, and s/he was one of the people who, again in this little timeline of ours, is still alive? Or how about if one of the people in Luby's with a handgun in that alternate timeline didn't happen to have it on his/her person because s/he had left it on the bedside table the week before and somebody broke in and stole it (and then used it to hold up the local 7-11 and kill one of the clerks)??

What IF?

From your link to one of the usual charming places:

Suzanna Gratia Hupp will live the rest of her life with regret. Had she been carrying her gun the day a madman executed her parents while she cowered helplessly and then fled, she is convinced she could have stopped one of the worst massacres in U.S. history.

I'm convinced that if only I had ... well, so many things, eh? I'd be a millionnaire today, or a famous novelist, or a supermodel. Ya just never knows, do ya?

Where did that bad guy get his gun, anyhoo?

Elsewhere, Gratia (now Hupp, I presume -- oh, and knock me over with a feather: she's a Republican) said:

http://www.oshadavidson.com/under_fire.htm

"My only regret," Gratia told a TV reporter, "is that myself or some other person, a reasonably sane person, didn't have a gun."

Well golly. If only the world were exactly the way we want it to be, all the time. If only only good guys got guns. Sadly, and I know it's just danged hard to believe: when good guys got guns, bad guys are gonna get 'em too.

And once you have CHANGED THE FACTORS IN THE EQUATION, you really do NOT just get to go back and pretend that all other things would have been equal in whatever little scenario you're hoking together to drive whatever agenda you're cruising around on.


How about Rwanda? Just a few rifles in the possession of the Tutsis? Oh wait, the UN will save you.

Oh wait ... if the big brave president of the big strong superhuman USofA (being the only one with the capacity in the region to do so at that instant) had BLOCKED THE AIRWAVES so that the radio station could not continue broadcasting the incitements to genocide that are recognized by thinking people everywhere as pretty much the sine qua non of that stain on the world's conscience, then the Tutsis really would not have needed any "handheld weapons" at all. But no, Mr. Bill snivelled about free speech, if you can fucking believe it, and hundreds of thousands died.

See? I can change the equation too. And my way's a lot better.

'Cause the world just ain't either/or -- even when you're trying to rewrite the past. You really just do not get to say okay, everything else stays the same -- but there's a guy with a white hat standing in the corner over there, and he's going to shoot the bad guy down with a single bullet before he even gets a shot off, and of course he isn't going to screw up and hit a bystander, and he isn't going to set the bad guy off into a frenzy of killing that he might not have done otherwise ... no, you're just going to make up a world that's exactly like this one except that some lone ranger with his trusty sidearm and steely gaze and rock-steady aim is always there, on the edge of the shadows, waiting to save us all. (Or hey, it's your fantasy, so maybe that's you I can't quite make out over there in that fuzzy halo of light ...)

What IF the dog hadn't stopped to pee? I'm sure you're absolutely convinced that it would have caught that rabbit. No ifs, ands or buts. Hindsight really is such a wonderful gadget, isn't it? Hope you didn't throw out the warranty.


Why are there no simple, shining examples of where restricting access to weapons made anyone safer?

Hey, I love a party game!

Let's see. There was the guy who walked into the hallway of my house next door when my father was staying upstairs, planning to steal whatever he might find (him having just lifted my purse out of my dining room unbeknownst to me). He ran off when my father called down the stairs. If he'd had a gun, my father would have died six months too soon. There ya go.

There was the guy who planned to kill me after abducting me, etc. He eventually made me get out of the car so he could take me "for a walk" in the bottom of the abandoned quarry. He turned his head, I ran like a demon out of there, he knew he had a problem, he split. If he'd had easy access to a gun, why, I probably wouldn't be helping you out here.

I live in the kind of neighbourhood where, if I were in a comparable sized city in most of the US, the sound of gunshots would provide our nightly entertainment. Hookers, crackheads, dealers, pimps. There have been too many assholes setting off very loud (and illegal) firecrackers in the last week, but gunshots? Never heard one. Not once, in 25 years. If the assholes in question and the rest of the riff raff had ready access to firearms -- why, once again, you might be talking to the wind right now.

But like I said immediately after you posed your "question": where are the shining examples of where prohibiting me from speeding has made me safer??

Of course I also said:

WHO ASKED YOU THAT QUESTION?

And that one's the simplest one of all.