Cowboy Nation

I wrote earlier about the recent massacre at Virginia Tech perpetrated by one lone man who besides being off his rocker, had extremely easy access to guns; access made all that more easy by the very lax gun legislation of The Commonwealth of Virginia. These laws (or rather lack thereof) make it possible to purchase any gun one would ever want with out permit or waiting period. In effect, in Virginia it is more difficult to adopt a cat from the local animal shelter than it is to get semi-automatic weapons.

As to be expected, the Gun Lobby claims that guns would have prevented this massacre. It seems that the Gun Lobby believes that as soon as this lunatic began firing, the students would have magically morphed into Bruce Willis and saved the day in a blinding flash of gunfire and testoserone. OOOOOOOkay.......

It is hard for one not of The Excited States of America to understand the American love affair with guns. To be sure, the right to bear arms is enshrined in their constitution. However, that said, I can't imagine that the founding fathers with their muzzle loading muskets could even conceive of the guns used by Cho Seung-Hui when he killed 32 people. Likewise, I don't think that they could envsioned in any way the carnage that happened at Virginia Tech. I believe that if they had any notion of what this amendment would have led to, the wording may have been drastically different.

I also can't figure this out: No one is asking for a ban on guns. All they want to know is who has them and waiting period to do a criminal/mental health check on the person who is buying it. That's it. No one wants to take their precious phallic symbols away. Now, that said, their government has carte blanche to tap their phones, it is even tracing the library books that people read, and they have their collective knickers in a twist because someone wants them to register their firearms.

I'd say they have a few larger problems than registering guns. But then, I'm Canadian.