I might disagree with you ; after all, he would have found it very difficult to kill that many people in that short of a time with anything other than a brace of automatic pistols, and if he had tried to make a bomb he might have killed himself instead, by accident.
I think, however, that there is a different point we must not miss : the events would not have been so terrible if not for America's culture of non-resistance. I said it after the 11 September 2001 attacks, I say it every time I hear the police advising people not to fight back against an assailant, and it has now been brought home once again : we as a people have been conditioned to respond to violence with acquiescence. My cousin remarked that when she was in school, twenty-five years ago, someone coming into a classroom with his hands full of weaponry would have been rushed. In this case, the only person (it seems) who even thought of acting against the assailant was one of the professors, an elderly Romanian Jew.
It was in response to a previous incident of this nature that the State of Texas began issuing concealed handgun permits, apparently to give its once notoriously rough and ready inhabitants Dutch courage. Such an expedient is no substitute for the refusal to submit to coercion, whether arising from nature or from instruction in ethics. The principal problem, I think it may fairly be said, is not an excess of guns so much as a deficit of less tangible armaments.
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Date: 2007-04-22 04:52 pm (UTC)I think, however, that there is a different point we must not miss : the events would not have been so terrible if not for America's culture of non-resistance. I said it after the 11 September 2001 attacks, I say it every time I hear the police advising people not to fight back against an assailant, and it has now been brought home once again : we as a people have been conditioned to respond to violence with acquiescence. My cousin remarked that when she was in school, twenty-five years ago, someone coming into a classroom with his hands full of weaponry would have been rushed. In this case, the only person (it seems) who even thought of acting against the assailant was one of the professors, an elderly Romanian Jew.
It was in response to a previous incident of this nature that the State of Texas began issuing concealed handgun permits, apparently to give its once notoriously rough and ready inhabitants Dutch courage. Such an expedient is no substitute for the refusal to submit to coercion, whether arising from nature or from instruction in ethics. The principal problem, I think it may fairly be said, is not an excess of guns so much as a deficit of less tangible armaments.
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