In the wake of the Virginia Tech murders, the inevitable wave of commentary about gun ownership in America continues to roll in. Associated to it there is a (perhaps more interesting) meta-argument: who is most tastelessly dragging politics into the somber aftermath of a national tragedy? As usual, the answer appears to be absolutely everyone on the left/right; so far, the only person staking out territory in the impending meta-meta-debate over the propriety of tastelessly politicizing the aforementioned tasteless politicization is Matthew Yglesias.
Tasteless politicization is in the eye of the beholder, however. To an advocate of concealed carry, the observation that a legally armed student or faculty member might have made a huge difference on the day in question is nothing more or less than common sense. To an advocate of gun control, the observation that Cho Seung-Hui’s actions were expedited by his ability as a resident alien to legally purchase handguns is similarly uncontroversial. Of course, common sense is another thing that is liable to be interpreted rather differently from blog to blog. In that spirit, former Suckster Chris Bray has some worthwhile things to say.
Meanwhile, there’s something muted and occasionally plaintive about most of the pro-gun-control commentary — even the Brady Center seems to have acknowledged that the issue is not really in play at the moment. (Alex Koppelman bemoans this state of affairs in Salon today.) Affiliated websites like Stop the NRA define the problem as follows:
…it is much too easy for the wrong people to get high-powered, deadly weapons and our leaders fail to do anything about the problem. [Emphasis removed.]
As always, it is extremely easy to determine who the “wrong people” are after the fact, and rather harder to do so in advance. Stop the NRA’s website doesn’t contain anything more specific than the organization’s name.
It should be noted that this kind of magical thinking is hardly confined to the anti-gun movement. Roy Edroso links to this wonderful thing, for instance:
And I’m sorry, some will really think me foolish, but I don’t think dorms should be co-ed, so that crazed, jealous boyfriends can enter their girlfriends’ dorms and kill them and the innocent young men who come to their aid. If it had been a single-sex dorm, the killer might not have been able to enter so readily.
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think a rule forcing crazed, jealous boyfriends to loiter outside the dorm instead of waltzing right in would necessarily have the desired effect. Any prediction tailored this specifically is vulnerable to reductio ad absurdum – after all, if Virginia Tech refused to admit Korean students as a matter of policy, Cho wouldn’t have been in a position to murder 32 people there. (If anyone has seen this argument being made with a straight face, please let us know in comments.)
The endless wrangling can be construed in a light that is at least vaguely positive. A hope that there might be a way, in principle, to somehow prevent mass murders from happening in the future is a fundamentally decent, abstract human impulse. In order for it to be articulated as policy, though, it must be tempered by other human impulses, such as the suspicion that this is all the fault of the bastards on the other side.
