• Virginia Tech Shootings... Pass the Buck!

    PTB is an American expression - Pass The Buck. As in, how can I shift blame onto some other chump? Since the tragedy of Monday's shooting, the left wing and the right wing in America have both been scrabbling to find somebody to blame.


    The left wing targeted private gun ownership. If guns weren't available in shops or stores, the shooter at Virginia Tech wouldn't have had any weapons to commit his murders with. Hence, ban all guns and stop all shootings.

    This is a very worthy, but inaccurate assessment. Cho Sueng Hui, the 23 year old gunman, obtained his two weapons illegally. Their serial numbers were scratched off. Whether he bought them on the black market, or from some dodgy criminal in an alleyway, the fact is that banning handguns would not have stopped this tragedy. There are hundreds of millions of guns floating around in the United States. Gun control can only control the registered and recorded ones.

    What gun control might have done, however, was to have prevented other shootings. The Colombine massacre, for example, was committed with two legally purchased 12 bore shotguns (obtained by the gunman's friend) and a Tec-9 semi-automatic bought from a second hand gun store. If handguns and shotguns were pretty much illegal (as they are in the UK) the boys in question wouldn't have had those weapons.

    What they would have had, however, were the pipe bombs they'd made from gas cylinders and fireworks. One of the gunmen set up an explosive in Colombine school cafeteria. Police say, if it had detonated, it could have killed 250 people and destroyed the building.

    So take the guns away and murders will still carry on.

    Gun control is fundamentally flawed, as I have mentioned above. Out of the millions of guns floating around America, a significant number (15% apparently) are unregistered and illegal. These are the guns floating around in the hands of criminals. This minority of guns causes the majority of crimes and banning the 85% of registered weapons will do nothing to curb the circulation of illegal firearms.

    In fact, statistics show gun control can have a negative impact on crime figures.


    • New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
    • In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
    • In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 %.
    • Over 50% of American households own guns, despite government statistics showing the number is approximately 35%, because guns not listed on any government roll were not counted during the gathering of data. [9]
    • Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982 but experienced no decline in violent crime.
    • Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.
    • 20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.[8]
    • UK banned private ownership of all handguns in 1997. Since 1998 the number of people injured by firearms in England and Wales has more than doubled, despite massive increase in number of police personnel.[9]
    • Violent crime accelerated in Jamaica after handguns were banned.
    The problem is in America itself. Despite a century of advancement, the country is still very much like the Wild West. Guns are everywhere. Effective gun control, like we've got in the UK, would take decades to really work.

    Statistics suggest that 9 children under the age of 19 die from gunshots every single day in the United States. If private gun ownership was banned, would that figure be reduced?

    But more importantly, would the American right wing be willing to sacrifice the "security" of private gun ownership to prevent these deaths?

    In a country in which most states still allow people to carry concealed weapons (at least the cowboys had 'em on show) I think the answer to that question is a resounding no.

    The Right Wing

    The right wing barked in defence of private gun ownership even before the smoke was clearing from Virginia Tech. The problems wasn't guns, they yelled. It was the shooter. An immigrant.

    Cho Sueng Hui was a South Korean.

    In the cultural melting pot of America, there's nothing that inflames a right winger more than an illegal alien. Except, perhaps, a legal one who commits a crime like this.

    Across several right wing sites, the cry is a ban on immigration. All immigration. No more marriage visas, work visas or student visas. People can come to visit Disneyland, but then they're gone again.

    Fortunately, it appears to only be a limited number of people who've adopted this lunatic suggestion. They seem totally unaware than the idea of banning immigration would have had as much effect on the Virginia Tech shootings as banning handguns would.

    Cho Sueng Hui was South Korean, certainly. But he'd been in the United States since 1992. He was a legal, permanent resident and unless the right wing wanted to follow up their immigration ban by exporting every non-US citizen currently in the country, he'd have still been in America to commit the shootings even while the borders were closed.

    Just like banning handguns will only effect the law-abiding citizens who purchase and register their weapons (leaving millions of guns floating around in the hands of criminals) a total ban on legal immigration would only target those entering the country legally.

    Millions would still pass over the 5,000 miles of undefended US border along Mexico and Canada. And thousands more would arrive on tourist visas and then never choose to leave. Illegal immigration would continue - probably at an accelerated pace, as more and more people are forced to break immigration laws just to enter America.

    Separating families and loved ones. Reducing access to skilled migrant workers. Taking millions of dollars of revenue out of the American higher education system. Banning all immigration would have a terrible effect on America and do nothing to achieve the right wing's aims.

    Sheer lunacy.

    And what's worse, such right wing posturing makes America's position in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan increasingly untenable. If America shuts it's doors to other countries, why on Earth should America feel it's appropriate to play it's part in the international community.

    Like a dog chasing it's tail, the few right wingers who want to totally ban immigration to America simply find themselves spinning in circles.
    AMENDMENT: It turns out that Cho might well have bought the guns legitimately and filed the serials off himself. That does change my perspective on things.

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