Yesterday, Tim Kretschmer, a 17-year-old boy, went on a shooting spree at his former school and later in the the small town of Winnenden in south-west Germany. After having found piles of unused ammunition, police also reported that the 17-year-old had intended to kill more than the 15 people he murdered.
As usual, a culprit was needed, because such a heinous crime can not be simply, you know, evil. The German media is full of the fact that the boy's father, a well-to-do businessman, owned (legally) guns, and that he is *gasp* an old-fashioned "patriarch". Do we really have to look any further for a culprit? Take over, Phyllis Chesler!
Of course, the "liberal German gunlaws" (they are anything but liberal) have something to do with it as well. Next we'll have to ban hammers, knives, frying pans, any blunt instruments, chainsaws, power drills, cars, aircrafts and every other thing that might take lives. Who cares that millions of people are not killed by the millions of people who use such things safely, including guns, every day. Who cares that our police is so crippled by politically correct brainwashing, including, but not limited to, the acceptance of women as patrol"men", that they have stopped functioning long ago. How could the murderer go on with his shooting spree after he left the school, killing several more people in the process? Who cares that the three gallant murdered teachers might have had a better chance of defending their pupils had they had guns and not just their bodies.
Some time ago, a case made moderate headlines when a 14-year old girl killed her six-year old sister with their father's hunting weapon. In fact, it was more the anti-hunting appeal of the case than the death of a child that got attention. The father was known as an inordinately conscientious gun owner and through a freak accident the girls had been left alone for a brief while -- with the gun. (I take it that it was a rifle, but use the term "gun" because of its generic quality.) The older girl had stated that her little sister had accidentially killed herself with the gun, which "a ballistic opinion" had proven impossible. (I don't need a "ballistic opinion" to know that a six-year old girl can not kill herself by pointing a long arm at herself, but whatever.) If I remember correctly (the case was discussed in hunting/shooting online fora), both children had been made aware by their father about the potential danger guns implicate, which means a basic tutorial on how they function. Grandfather (who had given the girl an alibi at first) and father (who claimed that HE had loaded the gun and not just left the box with bullets beside it, which is highly unlikely for the conscientious gun owner he reportedly was) have protected her and will presumably go on doing so. Now you tell me that a 14-year-old girl on the verge of adulthood, who has been made specifically aware of the danger guns implicate, kills her little sister by mere carelessness or a "prank gone wrong" and I will say that, had that not happened, we might have seen a bathing accident or something like that sooner or later.
But we can always ban bathing, can't we? Anything not to be reminded that Evil exists.
2 comments:
A truly horrifying event, but it just goes to show that government cannot completely protect you from the deranged bent on doing evil. The notion that if no one had guns these things would not happen is fallacious.
London in Chaucer's day had a crime rate higher than that of any modern American city and a homicide rate many times that of London today. They didn't have guns in those days. Scotland I am sad to say has one of the highest rate of knife crimes in the world. They regulate knives the way many countries try to regulate guns, but you can make a knife out of anything.
What is the most enclosed, regulated and closely monitored environment in the world? Prison. However at a small museum at our old state prison, they had a collection of WORKING FIREARMS that had been confiscated from the prisoners. As one of the retired guards (now guide) said, "Crude, but they could kill you just as good as the gun off the sporting store shelf.
My brother and I once built a working shotgun with scraps and materials found around the house and garage just to see if it could be done. It can and we did. I could make a make a nasty knife or short lance out of our local flint deposits.
The worst mass slaughter in a school (barring the Beslan terrorist attack)happened in Bath Township Michigan. Andrew Kehoe was upset over his property taxes going to the school district. So he killed his wife, burnt his farm buildings down,and drove his car loaded with dynamite to the local school where he detonated and killed 45 people and injured 58 more. Mind you, this was in May of 1927. Long before people thought much of mass murderers. It is still the worst slaughter of school kids in America.
From the news report I read, this boy was targeting girl students and female teachers. There was some kind of emotional rejection here. To make guns the issue misses the point and will do nothing to prevent future events. How absolutely crappy that the German media is seeking to blame a father who has to be totally devastated over what has happened with his son. Dealing with guns is easier than dealing with human nature, especially when it goes off the rails. The media and social pundits are despicable and in la la land the way they are trying to spin this sad, sad event.
The truly determined, the fanatical, the mentally ill will find a way to strike at those they think are injuring them. And even a totalitarian government can't totally stop that. I'm getting worried who point to such events as a need for gaining more control over our lives.
Chaucer's London... Good point, 'gator! I somewhere read that the measure of freedom in a society is the freedom to acquire and carry arms. The more I think of it, the truer it seems to me. One of the first things the Nazis did was to take the arms from the Jews.
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