At 09:40 AM 3/7/01 +0100 J. van Baardwijk wrote:
>You can make laws all you want to ban anything you want, but that doesn't
>solve the problem. In order for those laws to be effective, you need to
>*enforce* them.
Well, this is a bit of change from your previous position, which was "The
first thing was 'jeez, what a hypocrit -- he acts like he's grieving, but
at the same time he's good friends with the NRA, and this will not
convince him to come up with more strict gun laws.'"
Personally, I agree - I think the emphasis should not be on writing more
laws, it should be on ensuring that the ones that we do have on the books
are enforced.
More importantly, I think that we need to do some serious thinking about
the cultural questions raised here. Like, how could this kids parents
think that he played on "all the sports teams", when in fact, he played on
none? How could the parents be so careless with guns? How could our
culture produce kids whose first reaction to shots being fired in school is
to grab cameras? How could our society fail to notice the warning signs
being sent by this kid? How could our society produce no less than three
attempts at "copycat" incidents within a day?
The whole thing, really is quite disturbing..... and no gun control law
will replace the dire need to address these questions.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
