Too Little, Too Late, And The Law

We all know of the shootings. We now know who and why. A senseless slaughter of people that had no apparent connection with the original problem, one triggered by a girl changing boyfriends.

Not to blame the girl... things like that happen endlessly. The part we need to investigate is why this guy flipped totally over such a trivial event.

This guy most likely killed the girl--one of the first two murdered--in a fit of jealousy and rage, then--when a bit of sanity returned--he probably figured he was done for anyway... might as well take a few more with him. Going all the way across campus to a specific building could mean he had a few students in particular singled out that had perhaps bullied, or embarrassed, or shamed him at one time or another. There is that nagging possibility that some of the later victims were freinds or buddies of his ex-girlfriend's new sweetheart and had a hand in the breakup.

Two other things come to mind while watching the headlines:

-1) People are screaming that the police were too little and too late.

-2) More gun laws are being called for.

As far as the police being too late, we have got to understand that--under normal circumstances--there is no such thing as police protection, except in very specific cases, such as a witness in a trial or a politican under threat.

Police are not designed or trained to prevent anything. They are not designed to protect or prevent. They are there to respond to a reported crime, one in progress, or one already done. The cute, catchy phrase "To Protect And Serve" is the invention of an advertizing agency. Cops do neither on a normal basis. Cops are not soldiers, trained to charge the enemy, face a hail of gunfire to secure an objective which may get themselves killed in the process. Perhaps in earlier days, when foot patrolmen walked a beat in your neighborhood, they could claim to be an aid in preventing crime with their presence, but not so today. Today they have isolated and remoted themselves in patrol cars, rendering their "preventive" effectiveness to almost zero, except--of course--on our highways, where they can be found in vast numbers, willing and ready to ticket those dangerous and criminal speeders.

True, their presence can prevent a crime in some instances, but even so, consider how ineffective they are in things like riot prevention.

Every citizen has always had the responsibility to protect themselves. When they forget that, they can easily become victims. Then the police step in, do the job they are paid to do, which is to try to catch the criminal. But they will not be there to stop a crime against you before it occurs. That's the way it is.

This lunatic had already killed 32 innocent people--and himself--before the police had a chance to fire a single shot at him, in what would have been a futile attempt to prevent anything.

The more gun laws bit. No one is mentioning that the university was already a "gun free" zone by law. Any type of firearm was prohibited on campus - already against the law. Noboby is mentioning that the Virginina legislature had just this spring passed a law prohibiting guns on that campus, that they had proclaimed the campus would be safer if no one was allowed to conceal and carry, or posess. Nobody is mentioning that even gun ownership in virginia is a very dicey thing, what with permits, registration, signing for ammunition purchases, the whole banana.

None of it stopped this South Korean resident alien from using two handguns to kill.

All those laws, the forms, the registrations, the licenses, the politicans... none of it prevented this crime. This crime was triggered--not by gun ownership or possession--but by a girl who decided to dump this guy.

Maybe we should generate a few hundred laws designed to prevent couples from breakng up, particularily while in college.

That ought to work, don't you think?

Addendum:

They're changing the story about the GF... now they're saying he had an imaginary one.