Wednesday 18 April 2007

Unbelievable

...and downright stupid. That's all I can say about the Americans after the slaying of 32 students by a student psychopath.

It's not the first time that campuses around the United States are hit by these mindless shooting sprees but every time it happens, all that the American people do is to grieve and pray at memorials to the victims.

But have they ever thought of the root cause of all these murders? Why they happen every now and then?

It's because the Americans are too self-righteous about their right to bear arms. It's a right that's enshrined in their Constitution: self-defence in the face of menace. That a lot of bull. What about the right not to bear arms? Who suffers when the right to bear arms clashes with the right not to bear arms?

There's just no political will in the United States to take away that right from their people. The law makers in Congress and the Senate are unsurprisingly quiet in the wake of the Virginia Tech University slayings. Ooh ... the elections are looming. Let's not commit political suicide. But the fact is, even when there are no elections, they will remain ambivalent over the whole matter.

I've been following some of the news reports that were written in the aftermath. One of the university students claimed that if one of the victims had armed himself, maybe he would still be alive today.

Another said: "I wish I had a gun that day. I wish some of the professors had had guns on them. They could have taken the shooter down."

Stupid, isn't it? Such a simpleton. That's not the solution to the problem. How can you ever control guns by acquiring more guns?! This is no longer the wild, wild west. This is supposed to be Civilisation and civilised people don't go around with guns around their hips any more.

The solution isn't more guns, the solution isn't more stringent background checks before guns are sold; the solution is to abolish the right to arms. Leave it to the law enforcers to carry arms, not you, not me, not the ordinary man-in-the-street.

It's real downright, damn stupidity. And the American law makers and the American people just can't understand it or they won't face up to this problem. How sad for their nation...

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