There's been another school shooting -- at the Lone Star College campus outside Houston -- but don't even bother wondering whether this will inspire a twinge of self-doubt among the gunners.
You see, guns are banned at Lone Star College's campuses. So every gun absolutist in America will now tell us that the shooting has nothing whatsoever to do with the gun culture Texas's attorney general recently crowed about in ads:
No, it's all the fault of gun-free zones. They breed shooters, you see. People who don't even own guns suddenly find themselves packing heat and feeling murderous rage when they enter a gun-free zone. It happens by spontaneous generation.
Oh, and Texas doesn't allow concealed carry on campuses anyway -- so Texas is, on this subject, dangerously liberal, as the gunners will endlessly remind us. (A bill to allowed concealed carry on campuses failed in 2011.)
As it turns out, a member of the Texas legislature filed a "campus carry" bill just last Thursday.* If we liberals were as conspiracy-minded as the right, we might start wondering whether shootings were being staged, with the understanding that they'd inevitably result in increased gun sales and, in the red states, looser gun laws. I'm not that paranoid -- though if we start seeing curiously timed shootings with minimal harm to human beings in GOP-dominated states with intolerably moderate gun laws, I'm going to have my suspicions.
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This is the fourth school shooting in the past 12 days and the sixth this month.
*Link fixed.
We never learn, do we?
ReplyDeleteThe new benchmark for making big news, is 20 dead Kindergarteners.
ReplyDeleteYou want to make a big impact, you now need to shoot to death 21 of them, or go for a dozen or more Pre-schoolers.
Oh, and some teachers and principals.
Otherwise, ho-hum...
Especially College kids - they're old enough, and should know better than to walk around on campuses without their guns - especially if they're on a Gun-free Campus."