Skating Vid

Neither him nor I will soon recover from that fall!

It's YouTube's Fault

Over at The Corner, Peter Suderman makes a good point: the VT shootings appear to be at least in part a product of the era of Internet self-glorification; in short, the age of YouTube. Perhaps they are a reaction to the fact we've gotten 90% of the way to Andy Warhol's prediction but not entirely: everyone can have his 15 minutes of fame but he needs to do something radical to achieve it. That may involve skating off a roof or killing a bunch of people. Same idea...

The Laws Didn't Help Here

Matt -

I'm actually very surprised that you're taking a position in alignment with the gun control advocates. I think you're being logically inconsistent. With respect to drug control laws, you recognize that it's impossible to affect in even the slightest degree the availability of drugs via criminal enforcement; and so the right thing to do is to accept that reality and work towards prevention, treatment, etc.

You need to break out of the leftist box for a second and realize that gun control laws are the same. You are not ever going to affect the availability of guns. People sometimes ludicrously point to Britain as an example; Britain is a little bitty island. What's the evidence? Well, it's illegal, for example, for a felon to possess a gun; and yet felons seem to get guns in great numbers.

Here's much more direct evidence: it's illegal for students to have guns at VT. And yet... well obviously. So given that you can't affect the availability of guns, what do you do? You make the legal ones available and tightly regulated (again, as we should be doing with guns).

And Matt, it's certainly a fact that if students who were so inclined were carrying for self-defense, this wouldn't have happened. The lunatic truly was able to dispatching 32 people with little bitty handguns because the sheep he was slaughtering didn't have even the most basic ability to fight back.

More Guns Is the Answer?

This is so outrageous! Gun advocates will yield to any rationale in an effort to protect their ability to possess lethal weapons.

From the NYT:

"In Virginia and on gun-rights blogs, some critics were challenging Virginia Tech rules that prohibit gun owners from carrying their weapons on campus. A committee of the State House of Delegates has considered legislation to override the ban, which is common at many other colleges.

No one can say for sure if allowing students and faculty members to carry arms would have prevented the rampage on Monday, said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. “But they wouldn’t die like sheep, at least, but more like a wolf with some fangs, able to fight back.”

But Blaine Rummel, a board member of Virginians for Public Safety, an anti-gun group, disputed the notion that arming more people would reduce violence. “Virginia is second in the nation in the ease of getting handguns,” Mr. Rummel said. “If easy availability was a solution, Virginia Tech wouldn’t be in mourning today.”

Rutgers Hos, British Pansies, and God

Matt -

You say, wisely, with regard to the Rutgers "women's" basketball team:

I'm always amazed at how somebody you don't know, who is in many regards reckless and salacious on purpose, could hurt your feelings? How fucking sensitive must you be? How week is your self esteem?

Indeed. Allow me to tie that into the despicable, pathetic behavior of the captured British "sailors." Why do I put "women" and "sailors" in sarcasm-quotes? Because as you point out, only a little child cares so much about what someone - who, by the way, she's never met who's paid to be offensive - says about her that she goes on national television to talk about how hurt she's feeling. And likewise, what the fuck has happened to the pride of the British Navy? The legendary British Navy that projected British power and hegemony around the world? One of the sailors revealed that he was terrified because a guard flicked his neck with his thumb. So the whole stinking crew got so scared that they sucked dick for the mullahs on world television and disgraced themselves. WTF are they teaching these people? WTF happened to discipline?

John McCain was imprisioned in a Vietnamese prison camp for over 5 years and tortured. Not once in those long years of suffering did he defame his country 1/10th as much as these British sailors. And to tie it back to the disgraceful Rutgers team - have some goddamn backbone and act like an adult! The entire world does not, in fact, revolve around your feelings nor anyone else's.

Which, in fact, leads me to another point. 90% of Americans believe in God. Why? Well obviously everyone comes to that decision in their own way, and many don't come to it at all, really, instead just carrying on as they've been taught; but often when I ask people why, they say they're afraid of there being nothing after death. I've always found this a bizarre reason to believe in anything, but maybe the Rutgers/British Navy displays have a common connection with this belief. If you think that your feelings are all-important, then your desperate desire for an afterlife may, in your mind, somehow prove the very existence of that afterlife. A generation taught to believe that they deserve everything their hearts desire may extend that thinking even unto the Infinite.