Ohio Group Politicizes Virginia Tech Tragedy
I'd like to start this post by offering my condolences to the victims and their families as well as to the entire student body of Virginia Tech. When I switched on the TV and learned of the tragedy at Virginia Tech I was horrified. I decided right away that that needed to be the top story of the day and that I wouldn't be posting anything that would take away from that story. Now its the day after though and I read something that made me mad enough to post about.
The group "Ohioans For Concealed Carry" issued a statement yesterday pointing out that Virginia Tech was a gun free campus and that the events of the day proved that such a system didn't work.
Still they managed to put it a little more politely than Matt Naugle did. He simply wrote the following in a post titled "Virginia Tech Is a Gun Free Zone".
Mike Kinsey at the Ohioans for Concealed Carry makes an important point- Click here to read it.
Ohio's colleges and universities should seriously re-think their anti-gun policies.
I decided to do a little research on the subject before starting this post and checked out the crime stats for both the Blacksburg, Va Police Department (covering 1993-2007) and Virginia Tech Campus Police (2003-2005). You know how many murders they've had in the past 10 years? Two. There was one in FY 1997/1998 and another in FY 2002/2003. But lets save this debate for a more appropriate time.
And if anyone knows about any other group on either side of this debate already using this event to argue their point please feel free to point them out in the comments. I would have been just as mad if these people had cited this as evidence that all guns should be banned.
Read More: Ohioans For Concealed Carry - "No Guns" Policy Ignored by Virginia Tech Shooter
2 comments:
Both sides have weighed in and are trying to use this to prove there points.
Personal opinion: If either side is right, it's the anti-gun control. No amount of gun control could have stopped this. That doesn't mean I agree with what they say and I ESPECIALLY think this is the wrong time to say it. But the pro-gun control group can't point to this and say "see".
For the record, I do not own a gun and would favor some gun restrictions.
I did a quick google search and found the following article.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=au2jymboEsWg&refer=us
In part, this article says "Gun control advocates in Congress said that while the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University underscores the need for tougher restrictions on firearms, they probably don't have enough support to pass such legislation."
I'm from an area where saying the words "gun control" might get you shot (or more likely screamed at). You might even arguably say that it's more controversial than abortion. While I too find myself in the middle of this issue it's been my experience that the pro-gun control people are much more receptive to debate while the NRA folks just cite the bumper sticker quote "Gun's don't kill people, people do" and refuse to admit that gun's help.
I wrote this post as a draft last night and posted it when I first got on the computer today. Since then I've seen groups of all shapes and sizes try to bend this event to support their causes. I expected that it would happen but not this soon.
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