Washington Ceasefire (an anti gun group) president Ralph Fascitelli has an opinion piece in the Seattle Times that blames the lack of gun control for the death of some kids at a rave. He says:

…last month our own Columbine event happened on Capitol Hill. In both cases, a deranged loner or two with an affinity for assault weapons carried out a horrific massacre of innocent children and adults.

Nevermind that Huff didn’t use what these folks consider an assault weapon to commit his crime. His affinity for them is clearly to blame. More:

Nobody is claiming that better gun-control laws could have prevented the Capitol Hill shootings. The issue is more complicated than that. It’s a deadly cocktail of easy access to powerful firearms and a societal paranoia that all too often leads to gun violence. Too many people feel they need a gun to protect themselves at home when, in fact, gun ownership raises the risk of gun violence.

Anyone with a brain knows that by better you merely mean more. And have you read your organizations own webpage, which calls for more? Gun ownership does not increase the risk of gun violence. There are countries with fewer gun owners than the US that have more gun crime and countries with more gun owners that have less.

The NRA is a body mostly of white men who live outside urban centers

Race card? Culture war card? You tell me.

[The NRA’s] stubborn solidarity has led to the repeal of the ban on deadly assault weapons and a flood of gun shows and private arms sales that allow criminals and terrorists easy access to military weapons whose primary purpose is to kill people.

These two lies are repeated often. The ban was not repealed. It had a sunset provision and was not renewed. And every weapon is designed to kill and what this guy considers an assault weapon is no more likely to kill than a hunting rifle. And the ban did not affect military weapons, which have been regulated since 1934 and banned since 1986. It affected weapons that looked like military weapons.

The options include stricter measures on gun shows and private arms sales, an ad campaign to build awareness on gun safety, mandatory trigger locks to prevent accidental shootings, and marked bullets so we can trace criminals to weapons. In short, a comprehensive joint program to address this deadly problem.

Isn’t that a list of things that you said would not have prevented this incident?

Posted in uncategorized on April 21st, 2006 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |