Oh, fine, let's take break to get disgusted at conservatives.

[prog]

The meme that the victims were a bunch of mincing cowards too sissified by their liberal environment to attack the gunman bare-handed seems to be rapidly spreading through the other camp. See comments by John Derbyshire, Nathaniel Blake, and Rush Limbaugh (as paraphrased by derspatchel).

Of tangential interest is a striking thought-experiment by bradhicks of what would have happened had any of the students been armed. I have no personal experience with guns or their use, so I don't know how accurate or relevant this is, but it made me think. (Gun control is an issue I stand absolutely neutrally on, and no recent events have changed this.)

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Kaine (who, as one commenter said, is actually a Democrat) came across as wonderfully sane and compassionate on the radio, but I do have some problems with the "decent interval" theory of political response to tragedy that he was endorsing, as I said right after Hurricane Katrina when I was one of the horrible people politicizing that tragedy. I and other Democrats were all nice and nonpartisan in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks, and our respect for that decent interval just meant that a lot of horrible panic legislation got passed and Bush got to ruin the country unfettered for years to come. If other people are kneejerking around in bad ways, or if your political opposition unambiguously contributed to the tragedy, I think you ought to speak out.

That said, I do find compelling some of the arguments that gun control really doesn't have a lot to do with this particular horror. The shooter here wasn't legally allowed to have the guns he had, since he'd been committed to an institution previously; the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique shootings happened under a very different gun-control regime. It's hard to imagine a reasonable gun law that, by itself, could have presented this, though maybe we could talk about better enforcement of the laws on the books.

Why perform a thought experiment...

[radtea.livejournal.com]

...when you can refer to the real thing?

<rant>

The thing about thought experiments is that they tell you absolutely nothing about reality, but a great deal about one person's thinking. As a means of exploring individual psychology they are great. As a means of informing policy debate they are worse than useless, because they do nothing but distract the discussion from the real issues, which are always about what really happens in reality, not what happens in some made-up fantasy.

I didn't follow the link so I don't know if it's pro or anti, and in any case it is an issue I'm on the fence about. But I'm not neutral on using thought experiments as a tool to investigate reality or start policy discussions. They simply have no place there.

</rant>

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as thought experiments go, that one seemed pretty ill thought out and not terribly educated. Or so it seemed to me. I don't know a ton about guns or SWAT operations, but I know enough to think the scenarios presented aren't necessarily the most likely, and certainly not the only ones.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

After the initial shock wore off I rapidly came to the same conclusion; that it was a one in a million tragedy and I'm far more likely to die from being run over by a bottle-blonde trophy wife in a giant Range Rover while she chats on her diamanté-encrusted RAZR, like nearly happened this lunchtime.

And having a gun in that situation would not have helped anyone, especially not her. My views on gun control stem mostly from the feeling that if I had one, I probably would have shot someone by now.

[grr-plus1.livejournal.com]

I've been annoyed at the continuous reporting, Bush speachifying, flags half-mast, Boston schools & police doing shooter-preparadness training, etc. over the shooting. 30 people dead is less than 1% of people killed by car accidents (or gun accidents for that matter). It was clearly a very rare event & will continue to be so.

I mostly agree with the Brad that gun control won't eliminate these rare events. However, if the irrational hooha over VA Tech causes people to enact better controls on gun sales - great! Thousands fewer kids & family members killed by gun accidents. If the irrational hooha leads to legislation that gives more seriously depressed (or otherwise psychologically crippled) access to treatment, that would be fantastic!