The Economist's Cookbook

Life is crazy.

Thirty-two killed in a shooting at Virginia Tech. I have friends that go there. Strangely though, I am not in mourning like the rest of the country seems to be. Yeah, call me cold and callous if you want, but I'm not choked up and bawling my eyes out over this. Well so what is the effect of all this.

Oh of course, GUN CONTROL.

Someone who is mentally unstable goes crazy and kills a bunch of people. Of course it's not the school's fault for letting someone like that continue to be on campus. It's not even the crazy Asian kid's fault because he's dead so we can't really blame him... and he's crazy, so it's not really his fault. Oh wait I know... it must be the fault of ... THE GUNS! That's right ladies and gentlemen, inanimate objects are now the subject of the blame for the killings.

Does anyone else realize how absolutely absurd that sounds ... putting blame on an unmoving object... Granted the purpose of a gun is to intimidate/harm/kill something. But since when were those purposes naturally evil?

Let's just examine this:
If we ban guns or even just handguns, then what will happen? The law abiding people will turn their guns in and the criminals, because they are criminals ... won't. Well those of us who are law abiding (relatively speaking) are now completely screwed. We lost the ability to defend ourselves on an even plane. This is just great.

Then the Europeans and Aussies stand up and say that "well we don't have guns and we don't have people being shot." You're right you don't you have people being stabbed to death and you have higher rates of robbery, rape, assault, theft, and various other crimes. So we have more deaths and less total crime and you have more total crime and we have more deaths, but less crime. Personally, I'd rather have the latter.

So here's to firearms! Keep them clean and keep them ready.
-Jon