One of my students this evening clearly wasn't totally involved in the class, and he apologized. He said he had had a horrible day and he listed the problems with his banker, with one of his clients and a couple of other things. He concluded by saying "I wish I were an American so I could just go down in the street and start shooting people."
Whenever one of the ubiquitous gun tragedies occurs in the U.S., there are always people who invert logic and say these incidents are not arguments for fewer guns, but for more. If one or two people in that Colorado theater had been packing, they insist, the tragedy could have been at least partially averted. Presumably if a few more Sikhs carried guns to church, the situation in Milwaukee would have been ameliorated somewhat also.
Well, the situation in NYC today pretty effectively refutes that argument. The final report obviously isn't in, but the NYC Police Commissioner has already said that some of the victims had to have been hit with police bullets, because the assailant's gun didn't hold enough rounds to account for all of the casualties. The police are as well trained as any group in the country in the use of guns, and there were still innocent bystanders shot. Perhaps it doesn't matter because none of the wounds are life threatening.
Remember: Guns Don't Kill People, Bullets Do
2 comments:
This is, of course, of no consequence because it is based on personal observation and not backed up by an opinion in the NYT.
Bob - Is there a part of this comment missing? As is, it seems somewhat addled.
What is of no consequence because it is not backed up by an opinion in the NYT? Does the statement of the NYC Police Commissioner become automatically invalid when quoted in the NYT? It was also quoted in the LA Times; was it valid there?
You appear to be saying that a news story in the NYT is of no consequence because it is not supported by an op-ed piece in the same NYT. Is that right?
Your ad hominem attacks on the NYT are becoming too predictable. Perhaps you could make some other kind of argument with more validity?
By the way, the Commissioner's comments, as quoted in the original story, were based on preliminary information. Yesterday he confirmed that all of the bystanders "were wounded by police bullets, bullet fragments or shrapnel from ricochets." Is any or all of that of no consequence?
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