Guns and Roses

My condolences for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. Life is never fair.

Which brings me to the post about gun control. Expect more debate on this issue in the aftermath of the shooting (American politicians seldom shied away from politicising tragedy). One side (generally called the Democrats) demanded tighter gun control. They reason that a more stringent policy will help to reduce criminal activities involving guns since it's harder for people to acquire fire weapons. The other side (the Republican) rejected this idea saying that if the victims of this shootings had guns themselves, they might survive the tragedy. A tighter gun control policy most probably will lead to more people not able to defend themselves. After all, the person did the crime and not the gun. Sounds like decent arguments from both parties, isn't it ?

I used to fully supported tighter gun control and laughed at the Republican's argument. "Used to" being the keywords. I guess now I can see where both sides are coming from and there's no definite method to tackle this problem. The Democrat thought that stricter gun control policy will lead to lower criminal rate involving guns. But what about illegal weapons? Stricter policy is not foolproof anyway. Sure, it might lower the crime rate but, I think, as long as the human factor is not changed, human being human, they will find a way to obtain guns or find other form of weapon(ry?). Should we make a policy for stricter terms for beer bottle or crossbow or swords or, God forbid, our fists? I think it's naive to think that a mere change in policy will solve the problem.

Not that the other argument is much better. Sure guns is not the criminal, but it sure does help, isn't it? Raising our hands in surrender saying that it's not the gun's fault that 33 people died is hopefully not the way we choose to go. As history has shown time and time again, basing something on the, supposedly, good within us, is not really a good idea.

So change the person. Change their idea and mindset. Change them. How? I don't know. Brainwash them or educate them or make it a subliminal message on the TV, anything will do. But it won't have an immediate effect (unless that subliminal message really takes off) and until the person has changed, a stricter gun policy is needed. What the heck, just ban all of them altogether.