Gun control, or not to gun control? That is the question.

As you can probably surmise, I am writing this post in response to the recent happenings at Virginia Tech. It is always hard to come to terms with the facts of life when things like this happen, and I have found it harder now that I am away from my friends and family and have no close friends here in whom to confide.

The massacre at Va Tech comes even more close to home, since I have several connections to the school (colleague studied there, know a couple kids who currently study there, crazy novice men’s coach from freshmen year went there….). Even more disturbing—to me at least, I have no idea if there is any significance to it. I will leave that to the FBI—is that (from what I can tell from the news coverage from both here and in the States) the largest group of students killed were in that class room in Norris Hall (an engineering building that seems to have housed a part of the School of Mechanical Engineering that did more Aerospace related work) and those students were in their German class.

Being a very rational type of person (there is a reason that I ended up in engineering), I know that these facts are probably not related, just the victims of wrong place wrong time, but there must be a reason why that particular building and room were targeted, since human beings, even mental ones, can never be completely random. And I know that it is just pure happenstance that I have so many random connections with the event.

What I find even more inconceivable (Inconceivable!), is that the Bush administration still thinks that there is no need for stricter regulations on fire arms. Yes, I know the circular argument of: well, the bad guys have guns so I need to have a gun also, so I can protect myself. There is also the thought that if one of the other students in the class had a weapon on them then they could have stopped the rampage. This thought, however, is almost scarier than what happened yesterday (and at Columbine and at Red Lake and at Austin and too many other places in what seems to be increasing frequency). I would definitely not feel safer if the random kid sitting next to me in class was carrying.

In my opinion, it would just escalate until no one felt safe unless they are carrying a weapon and that would be a very, very, very scary world in which to live.

I do not have any specific statistics or what-not to cite, and I do not really feel like doing any intensive research on the subject at the moment (yeah, yeah, how can you expect people to believe what you say, if you do not back it up with substantiated information, well, tough, this is basically a personal blog, so I can come up with unsubstantiated arguments when I feel like it) but I would certainly feel safer in a country with tighter gun control, and I believe that there is some evidence somewhere to back this up: that in places with tighter control on guns, there is less gun violence. And in a strictly analytical-causal approach, that makes perfect sense; fewer guns = less gun violence.

Those are my not carefully edited and randomly organised thoughts stemming from yesterday’s incidences. On a happier note: I changed the tire on my bike by myself; I am taking Spanish twice a week, we will see how that goes; and crew goes into full time tomorrow.