Virgina Tech One Year Later

Tried posting the following over at The NY Times Virginia Tech Comment area, and was rebuffed enough times to say the heck with it. Error message after error message bade me to just come back here.

The hue and cry today is that society seems to have more violent criminals out and about, but what we know to be absolutely true is that there are far more victims around than ever before.

I've no proof to back this up, but wouldn't be surprised if the number of wackjobs looking to do us harm hasn't changed all that much from times gone by, but victim status certainly has increased exponentially. Far fewer people are capable of defending themselves, laws prohibit the possession of firearms to do battle with someone else using a firearm, and the general consensus among both law enforcement and university braniacs is that more signs banning violence is what is needed to solve the problem.

Because when you get down to the nitty gritty, that is really ALL they've proposed.

It is not, nor has it ever been, the job of law enforcement to protect the populace. We hire men and women to do full time what we all used to do part time. The modern cliche goes something along the lines of "when help is needed the police are only minutes away", and in a matter of life and death mere minutes can literally mean a lifetime to someone in dire need of help.

Until we return to assuming responsibility for ourselves, killers will continue to thrive in modern murder holes such as college campuses. Psychoanalyzing them isn't going to help, begging won't do much good, and running and hiding isn't much of a plan.

Teachers, after all, are better at instructing than doing, and modern law enforcement is more worried about going home at night than letting it all hang out to save a life. In both instances, what once was a vocation is now nothing more than a job, and we can't use such workers to help us in the fight against crime. Sorry. The bottom of the barrel isn't going to cut it.

It's up to us. As its always been. All the teeth gnashing and hand wringing in the world isn't going to change reality to suit those who'd rather flee than man-up.

I'll gladly think seriously about recanting all of the above the day a mass murder occurs in a police station or shooting range.