Thank you, God!

[Thomas]

Gil,

I'm not addressing the specific incident; I'm addressing what I consider an obscurity of the issue. To say that a law is unnecessary because we already know it cannot be enforced is to say that we have a slew of pretty unecessary laws on the books already.

That kind of argument clouds the real issue, which has to do with moral and social values.

Just to be simple: Assume that I hate speeding laws and always break them. If enough guys like me feel that way, why the hell would we need speeding laws? I mean, we will all break them anyway. We have speeding laws because it's been decided that they do two things--prevent deaths and bring extra cash into the local law enforcement offices. [img]http://wines.com/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

On the spcific issue of the latest college shooting. Rather than have a shootout in the college, perhaps it would have made sense to prevent a young man from buying two guns within five weeks, a young man who also left a trail of mental instability and strange beahvior incidents. It seems perfectly reasonable that people like that are a risk.

The argument that criminals will get guns with or without laws has absolutely nothing to do with young people with unstable personalities. If a wall had been in place the young man would not have had easy access to weapons and since he was not a career criminal he probably would not have been able to get one gun, let alone two.

Again, it is a moral and social issue whether or not it makes sense to prevent people from acting rashly with relative ease.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that this young man was neither licensed nor supervised and trained with firearms, so why was he able to buy two guns within a month or so?

[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 04-19-2007).]