Blog Entry

Yet another school shooting has happened and obligatorily the suggestion that we all strap sideirons to our belts is proffered as the solution to protecting ourselves from danger.

Was the Old West safer because of pervasive gun toting? Was Rome, Athens or Sparta safer because daggers were everywhere? Surely, medieval Europe is the very model of personal security?

The very ease which the psycho at Virginia Tech obtained a weapon is a large part of why this disaster happened. The other, more omnious reason is simply that the dude wanted to kill. There's little that can be done to stop the lone gunman.

If you think that you would have been able to "drop" the gunman had you been there with a weapon, I'd take odds that you would have failed. It's very difficult to perform security under fire. Trained police and military forces have a hard enough time doing it.

Gun advocates implore us not to trust the government to save us. To an extent , I agree with them. Citizens need to do a certain amount of disaster preparation (see Katrina). However, you don't need to worry about the odd gunman/terrorist/revenuer.

Events in which you are faced with an armed opponent are outliers. Worry instead about drunk drivers and bad weather.

[Note: personal gun ownership does not scare the government into following the Constitution (they have much bigger guns), but voting sure does.]