Re: gun control

[sec@moscow.com]

> As Richard Cohen said in today's Washington Post (excerpt):
> 
> ...The teenage market is huge and rich. Last year, teenagers spent $141
> billion, or $4,548 each. If you think this market is not going to get what
> it wants, you don't know America. Here, the consumer is king. Just look at
> the summer movies or most of what's on television. This culture caters to
> the young because the young have money and the determination to spend it.
> 
> So, if some kids think high school is worth both murder and suicide, it is
> not only because they have lost sight of reality on account of computer
> games. It's also because they have been told by every fiber of commerce
> that the artificial, juvenile, astoundingly superficial world of high
> school is the ultimate reality -- a loss of perspective that is often
> funny, but can easily turn tragic. No one ever says, Grow up! Shut up!
> Instead, it's, Do it! Spend it!

Bravo! not to mention all the 8 year old girls who think there fat!

> This is who we are. This is who we've become. There is no turning back and
> there is no controlling the Internet. There is, though, one element of the
> Columbine tragedy that is controllable -- the guns. The event was
> extraordinary but, in a way, the victims were typical. They were just some
> of the 1,000 or so kids annually killed by firearms.

Um Ron, is that the 10 a minute that are killed? or the 10 an hour? 
which number are we using here?

> In the weeks since the Littleton massacre, tragedy has ripened into
> travesty. A hypocritical president asks Hollywood to clean up its act and
> then begs it for campaign money. But it is Congress that takes the cake.
> It piddles around with gun control measures that are truly pathetic. Child
> locks, background checks, raising the age.

true, gun locks are dangerous, how long until someone is killed because of a trigger lock?
and the messures are pathetic, people scream about the NRA 
"owning" congress, what about HandGun Control Inc? they have 
been shown time and again to "adjust" numbers, (ie:, when it comes 
to firearm deaths, a "child" is from the age of 1 to age 25), should 
they be trusted?

what we need to know is the reasons this is happening.. not the how 
but the why. after 100 plus years of public schooling in this country. 
most of those years when we had more lax firearms law, are kids 
suddenly doing this?

> In the one area where something tangible and immediate can be done,
> nothing of real consequence will happen. An ocean of guns will be
> reduced by a pint here or there. This is the culture that really made
> Littleton possible -- a government as smitten with guns as the kids who
> wound up using them. 

a culture that has taught us that killing is cool, that it is 
entertainment, that no one really gets hurt.

it's not guns.. it's what we teach our kinds. guns don't kill people, 
people kill people.. weather with a firearm, a baseball bat, a scout 
knife, an automobile, or starving themselves to death to be thin like 
the "cool" people on Friends.

don't blame to tool, look for the answer.

Stan Evans