- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 430
Some words from Gwynne Dyer :
As various commentators will be pointing out soon, if just one of
those 33 murdered students had been carrying a concealed handgun maybe the
killer would have been stopped sooner. It's perfectly legal to carry
concealed weapons with a permit in Virginia, but not on college campuses.
This loophole must be closed. At least, that is the way the argument is
usually put in America, although the reality is not one gun per citizen
over the age of twelve, but some citizens with a great many guns and most
citizens with none at all.
More fundamentally, the gun control argument may be missing the
cultural point. Most Swiss and Israeli households with a male between the
ages of 18 and 45 also contain a fully automatic weapon, because the
national military mobilisation model in those countries requires
reservists to keep their weapons at home. Yet the Swiss and Israelis don't
murder one another at a higher rate than people in countries like Britain
or Turkey, where there is relatively strict gun control.
"Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is the best-known
slogan of the National Rifle Association, the most effective pro-gun
lobbying organisation in the United States. But it's really a cultural
thing: the British have bad teeth, the French smell of garlic, Americans
tend to have more bullet-holes in them than other people. The slogan should
actually go: "Guns don't kill Americans; Americans kill Americans."
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Gun%20Country.txt
As various commentators will be pointing out soon, if just one of
those 33 murdered students had been carrying a concealed handgun maybe the
killer would have been stopped sooner. It's perfectly legal to carry
concealed weapons with a permit in Virginia, but not on college campuses.
This loophole must be closed. At least, that is the way the argument is
usually put in America, although the reality is not one gun per citizen
over the age of twelve, but some citizens with a great many guns and most
citizens with none at all.
More fundamentally, the gun control argument may be missing the
cultural point. Most Swiss and Israeli households with a male between the
ages of 18 and 45 also contain a fully automatic weapon, because the
national military mobilisation model in those countries requires
reservists to keep their weapons at home. Yet the Swiss and Israelis don't
murder one another at a higher rate than people in countries like Britain
or Turkey, where there is relatively strict gun control.
"Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is the best-known
slogan of the National Rifle Association, the most effective pro-gun
lobbying organisation in the United States. But it's really a cultural
thing: the British have bad teeth, the French smell of garlic, Americans
tend to have more bullet-holes in them than other people. The slogan should
actually go: "Guns don't kill Americans; Americans kill Americans."
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Gun%20Country.txt