First off, I want to say that the shootings in Colorado were horrible things. For those who lost family or friends, my prayers go out to you. In a post-fall world though, people do terrible horrible things.
On to the subject of this blog though. Take a look at this screenshot:
This is a snippet of today’s frontpage at the UK Telegraph. Look at the top “The Dark Knight can’t be Blamed” and bottom “Shooting raises questions about US gun Laws.” I don’t see how those things are consistent. Of couse they are going to say the film can’t be blamed (I agree). But that doesn’t jive with blaming guns. I personally don’t think guns (or the availability of guns) has any bearing on things like this.
I live in the UK, at the moment. The gun laws here are horrible if you want to own guns, hunt, target shoot, or even be an olympic shooter (they can’t practise here because the gun laws prohibit it). But people still get shot. Even the Duke of Edinburgh “If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?” Everyone sees that isn’t going to happen…so why do people think firearms are different.
I’ve written about this before, after the VT shootings, guns aren’t the problem…criminals are. I also stick by my position that the solution is more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens (in the form of CCW permits). Why do I say this? Take a look at the following video where an armed citizen, legally carrying a concealed firearm thwarts the nefarious plans of two skumbags:
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[Update 2012-07-20 17:41:17] I added the link to the video.
[Update 21 Dec 2012 21:32] Updated link