Lessons from the Virginia Tech SHooting

We just beat Columbine. By 13.

Due to the shooting this week, people are asking all kinds of questions, like "what does it mean? how can we prevent it?"

Obviously, the first thing people go after is the gun. We must ban guns. Had guns not been legal in this country, this would not have happened.

Yet, lets look at the facts this week.

• The Nagasaki mayor was assassinated using a handgun. In Japan. Handgun ownership is totally outlawed in that county.
• In Brazil, there was a massacre of 15 people. Using guns. That country has much tighter gun restrictions than this country. It is not possible to do this with the guns that are legal to own in that country (although there is quite a black market in illicit firearms).
• In Mexico, a shooting in a hospital - a hospital - resulted in the deaths of three people. In that country, it is not permissible to own anything more powerful than a .22 caliber. Any hospital shootings in this country? By the way, it was connected to organized crime, who probably used something more powerful than a .22
• And it was mentioned that despite the fact that Germany has very tough handgun rules, it had a large school shooting as well, as was mentioned by a German newspaper commenting on the Virginia Tech shooting. 18 people died - merely two less than Columbine. Indeed, it takes a year to buy a gun and it is very nearly impossible to legally own a handgun (it is noted that the illegal gun ownership rate in Germany is twice as high as the legal gun ownership).

Despite this fact, some push for more gun control - even if such new laws would not have prevented this. Here is an excerpt from an LA Times editorial:

Leading British, French, German, Italian and Spanish newspapers have blamed the United States for listening to Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Assn. Many of their claims are a little strange. At least two papers said we should ban semiautomatic assault weapons (even though the killer did not use one); another said that buying a machine gun is easier than getting a driver's license (even though no one can legally buy a machine gun); a third wrote that gun violence is becoming more common (when in fact the U.S. homicide rate has fallen dramatically over the last dozen years).

Enough with guns. So what else can we do to prevent this?

Actually, mass school shootings are a very, very rare phenomon. You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than being involved in a Virginia-Tech type shooting. In otherwords, it would be very nearly cost-prohibitive to prevent this. There would be massive violations of civil liberties needed to prevent this, including searching everyone's homes every day.

Sometimes, there are costs that we have to bear to live in a free society. Yes, tragedy happens, but that is the way life goes.