sometimes I like standing on my soapbox

I saw humorist David Sedaris read selections of his work last week at UCLA. The one thing that stayed with me was something he said off the cuff during a Q & A at the end. I forget the question, but it led Sedaris on a tangent about the Virginia Tech shootings.

He said that after 9-11, they wouldn’t let you take box cutters on an airplane and after the shoe bomber (Richard Colvin Reid) was caught, everyone had to take off their shoes get them x-rayed. His point was, why then, after so many shootings, don’t we make it harder to get a gun.

The New Yorker looked at how other countries reacted to VT-like atrocities. It turns out that they do something about it (link at the bottom). After sixteen children got shot in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, the Brits tightened their gun laws. And in Canada and France, the same thing happened.

After the VT shooting, the first thing I heard from the White House was that it was a great tragedy, but "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms…” (link at the bottom). This quick dismissal of any gun control discussion before it could get started leads me to believe that regardless of the number or severity of gun-related tragedies at schools or shopping malls or anywhere else, any progress with this President is hopeless.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OHQUM01&show_article=1

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/04/30/070430taco_talk_gopnik