Cogito Ergo Geek: April Massacre: Virginia Tech:
The Lars Larson featured an interview with Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. While careful not to suggest that any restrictions should be applied to "lawful citizens", he carefully made the point that "... maybe we should make it harder for individuals to get some of these guns in the first place. Not you, but people like the shooter today". He was unable to present a cogent argument differentiating between the radio talk-show host, and "the shooter today" except "We don't have any information on exactly where he got the gun or how he got the gun, but I think, you know, part of the solution is not just shooting the bad guy when he started but trying to keep it ... make it harder for the bad guy to get these guns in the first place."
This is a link to my April 16, 2007 article based on the Virginia Tech shootings.
Go ahead and read the original article, if you wish. According to my stats counter log, this was one of my most 'popular' articles in the past week. I can only assume that Virginia Tech (and other mass shootings) are of great interest to readers today.
Looking at the very short quote above, it's clear that the issues haven't changed. At least, from the point of view of the Gun Control Lobby. They want to impose MORE draconian laws against purchase of firearms by .. everyone. It's a "shotgun" approach (if you will excuse the expression); a wide-ranging legal attempt to keep guns out of the hands of EVERYONE, not just those who are most likely to misuse firearms.
This is so typical.
I understand that 'these people' cannot imagine why anyone who is a "law abiding citizen" would want to own a firearm. Their mantra is that guns are for killing people. Period. And there is no justifiable reason why a civilized person would want to kill people. Certainly THEY would not want to shoot someone, and so they judge the rest of the world based on their on (highly protected) lifestyle.
The term "Law Abiding" is just noise to them; if you have a gun, you should go to jail.
Or to be more succinct,
in the words of Rosie O'Donnell: “
you are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison.”
(Please, do NOT ask me to show you the
youtube of that quote; I just spent two hours watching the woman's
youtube videos, and that quote does no appear anywhere. Have they all been deleted at the request of "The Queen Of Nice"? I don't know and at this point I don't care. The quote has been documented elsewhere, and it has never been denied by O'Donnell or her associates. Just .. please, don't ask me to EVER view another Rosie O'Donnell show. Okay? Enough that
she ambushed Tom Selleck in 1999 on gun control issues, and years later the reprehensible
Lawrence O'Donnell .. any relation? .. spent ten minutes lambasting Selleck for his perceived pro-gun representation.)
(All links open in a new window)
Okay, I admit it; I digress. And I'm going to digress from the initial topic even more, now. In fact, I'm not going to talk about "gun control" at all. Instead, I intend to talk about "Mass Murders", in the past 300 years. Not ALL of them .. there have been so many, it goes beyond the scope of what you are willing to read!
Let's just talk about the mass murders which have occurred in the month of April .. which is apparently fertile ground (speaking in terms of the calendar) for the madmen among us.
April has historically been the month when the "worst of the worst" massacres have occurred in our great country. I've suggested that this was because Adolf Hitler's birthday was in April (
April 20, l889) and crazy people seem to gravitate to this date as their choice for "the best month to kill a lot of people". There is no evidence to support this assumption, except that .. well, you do the math;
here is a google search of "massacres in April"., presented in no particular order:
- (01) Waco (Tx) (ended April 19, 1993) American "religious community", in a "compound" are besieged by American local law enforcement, Federal agencies (including ATF), and American Army units after a contretemps involving purportedly illegal firearms transfers. The siege lasted from 2/28 thri 5/19, 1993.The group was suspected of weapons violations and a search and arrest warrant was obtained.
The incident began when the
(ATF) attempted to raid the ranch. An intense gun battle erupted,
resulting in the deaths of four agents and six Branch Davidians. Upon
the ATF's failure to raid the compound, a siege was initiated by the (FBI), the standoff lasting 51 days. Eventually, the FBI launched an assault and initiated a tear gas
attack in an attempt to force the Branch Davidians out. During the
attack, a fire engulfed Mount Carmel Center and 76 men, women, and
children,including David Koresh, died. Controversy ensued over the origin of the fire; a government
investigation concluded in 2000 that sect members themselves had started
the fire at the time of the attack. Timothy McVeigh cited the Waco incident as a primary motivation for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
- (02) Columbine (Co) (Littleton, Colorado: April 20, 1999
) In what now is known as the Columbine Massacre, 13 are killed and 22 wounded by two gunmen.
- (03) Virginia Tech (Va) (April 16, 2007) A student gunman killed 33 in dorms and a nearby classroom building. He then killed himself.)
- (04) San Diego, Ca (April 15, 1995) A 36-year-old graduate engineering student kills three professors while defending his thesis before a faculty committee
- (05) Keyesville, Ca (April 19, 1863) The Keyesville Massacre occurred... in Tulare County (now Kern County, California) during the Owens Valley Indian War. White settlers ... killed 35 .. (indians) men, "about ten miles from Keysville [sic], upon the right bank of Kern River".
- (06) Ludlow (Colorado) (April 20, 1914)
Colorado coal mine strike results in an attack on workers by company
guards; "several men", two women and children were killed. Total dead
estimated at between 19 and 25 people 2 women and 11 children were
reportedly "...
asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent." The deaths
occurred
after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking
workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern
Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914
- (07) Erfurt, Germany (April 26, 2002) A former student kills 18, including himself at a school in eastern Germany.
- (08) Kibeho (Rwanda) (April 17 - 22, 1995) "About 4200" ethnic Hutus were killed in refugee camps by soldiers of the ethnic "Tutsi" tribes. (Body count unreliable; generally assumed undercounted)
- (09) Jeju (Korea) (April 8, 1948) "... against a background of an ongoing ideological struggle for control of
Korea and a variety of grievances held by (a disparate group) against the local
authorities, the many communist sympathizers on the island attacked
police stations and government offices. The brutal and often
indiscriminate suppression of the leftist rebellion resulted in the
deaths of tens of thousands of both villagers and communist radicals and
the imprisonment of thousands more in internment camps."
- (10) Deir Yassin (Palestine) (April 9, 1948) "Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the
village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died
when hand grenades were thrown into their homes"
- (11) Shanghai, China (April 12-13, 1927) During the Chinese revolution, Chiang (Kai-shek) ordered the Communist party members and "union members"to be disarmed: more than 300 people (were) killed and wounded. At a later protest,soldiers opened fire, killing 100 and wounding many more. Over 1000 Communists were arrested, some 300
were officially executed and more than 5,000 "went missing".
- (12) Thalit (Algeria) (April 3-4, 1997) "The Thalit massacre took place in Thalit village some 70 km from Algiers.. 52 out of the 53 inhabitants were killed by
slitting their throats. The homes of the villagers were burned down
after. The attack was blamed on Islamist guerrillas. (Note extensive list of "Algerian Massacres here.)
- (13) Rwanda (April 5, 1994 thru mid July, 1994 ) "The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus that took place in 1994. Over the course of approximately 100 days (from April 6 through mid-July) over 500,000 people were killed... Estimates...have ranged from 500,000–1,000,000,
or as much as 20% of the country's total population.
- (14) Jallianwalla (India) (April 13, 1919) British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ... hearing that a meeting of 15,000 to
20,000 people including women, children and the elderly had assembled at
Jallianwala Bagh, ... went with fifty Gurkha riflemen to a raised bank
and ordered them to shoot at the crowd. Dyer continued the firing for
about ten minutes, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted;
Dyer stated that 1,650 rounds had been fired... Official ... sources gave a figure of 379 identified dead, with approximately 1,100 wounded. The casualty number estimated by the
Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000
dead.
- (15) Syria (April 12, 2013) Some 19 people (were) killed in fighting across Syria ... according to the opposition group (.... a political committee.)
Twelve of those were in Aleppo, in the north-west, and six in Damascus
and its suburbs, according to the group. The LCCs said that 149 people
were killed in the civil war yesterday, 41 of them in Homs (a town), 36 in Aleppo, and 33 in the capital. Another activist
group ... said 125 had been killed, 40
of them in Homs, 33 in Aleppo, and 19 in Damascus and its suburbs.
These groups’ reports cannot be verified because media access to Syria
is limited.
- (16) Armenia (April, 1915) "In April, the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist... The Armenian population was estimated at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918.... By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared."
- (17) Haiti (18 April 1804) a (black) Haitian General, Jean Jacques Dessalines, after the fall of the French Empire, decreed that all white people should be killed. He traveled through Haiti ensuring the slaughter. In April, in the town of Port Au Prince, he directed that all white people be killed. Over 1700 were subsequently slaughtered, often under the most brutal of applications. The total number of people killed in Haiti under his direction is estimated to be between 3000 to 5000 by the end of April,1804.
- (18) Guatemala (April 3, 1982) Guatemalan soldiers shot, and hacked to death with machetes, entire villages.
Remember .. these were ONLY massacres which occurred in April.
Of those 18 April Massacres, six occurred in America ....
(1) Waco ( Government attack on 'religious stronghold' by American police, Federal agents, Army);
(2) Columbine (Student assault on a high-school by disenfranchised students);
(3) Virginia Tech (Student assault on a college by a single disenfranchised student);
(4) San Diego (College Graduate Student kills thesis testers);
(5) Keysville (white settlers attempt to wipe out native americans)
(6) Ludlow (Coal miners strike: strike-breakers attempt to wipe out strikers)
The six American 'incidents' were .. varied. It's tempting to say that they were the product of disgruntled citizens (often students) striking out at their "Masters" .. if in inappropriate manners.
As for the 12 'non-national' (Non-American) incidents ... did you notice a pattern? They all fell into one of three different categories:
- Governments attacking their citizens to prevent the overthrow of the national leadership;
- Non-governmental groups within a nation attacking their rivals, in a bid for ascendancy;
- Non-governmental groups within a nation attacking people for no discernible motive other than sheer detestation of their respective tenet, race, creed or religion.
And often, these differential boundaries overlap until you can't tell who is killing whom for what reason! Almost universally, the target groups were identified by political, racial, religious, or tribal affiliations.
SUMMARY:
We have heard so much of late, about how Americans are killing each other
en mass. It seems that this is a new phenomena, something which is unheard of in America or in the world.
In truth, though, it's just the same old "man's inhumanity toward man" which we have seen so frequently over the years. We're accustomed to hearing how the white settlers massacred the 'indians' in the drive toward the white "
manifest destiny", and we have become inured to the tragedies imposed for the sake of "
Lebensraum".
Except that now it's not governments or organizations massacring people; it's individuals doing the same thing, and on a smaller scale. Isn't it odd that when Groups (including Governments) massacre tens or thousands of people, it's just "History"; but when individuals transcend the barrier between Government and Individual, we are outraged that one lone madman would shoot up a dozen people? Where was the outrage when, for example, Dyer directed the slaughter of a thousand Indians?
Stalin said:
When I first read that, I was appalled. Now, it seems that we are so focused on the 'tragedy' that we forget the 'statistics'.
Have we become so inured by the governmental murder of their people that we have lost our perspective?
Here is some perspective for you:
Oh, and lest we forget:
Bath, Michigan: (
May 18, 1927)
By far the worst school massacre in US history took place in the tiny
town of Bath, Michigan in 1927. There, an angry school board member
named Andrew Kehoe blew up the town’s school, killing 45 and wounding
58. Most of the victims were kindergarten through sixth grade students. A
secondary explosion killed Kehoe and the school Superintendent.
No "Assault Weapons" were used in the commission of this crime.
It was sort of like the Boston Massacre .. but then, we tended to overlook this kind of thing, until just recently. Didn't we?
Oh. I meant the 2013 version, not the 1770 version of the Boston Massacre.
In 1770, the Brits shot our citizens for civil disobedience; in 2013, religious fanatics blew up our citizens because they were .. well .. "our citizens".
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Only, 'different'.
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