This article is so unbelievably full of shit, I just HAD to post it. The article's text is in bold, mine is not.
The massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech University has left Americans dumbstruck. It is the latest and so far the most bloody in a series of murderous attacks at US educational institutions. At each of the appalling crime scenes, youngsters have settled grudges or played out video game fantasies with powerful automatic weapons. And those weapons are sold over the counter in virtually each of America’s 50 states.
Umm...No you can't. You cannot buy "powerful automatic weapons" over the counter. You can buy them if you have a special, hard to get license, but automatic weapons are almost NEVER used in the commission of a crime. The best known criminal use was the North Hollywood shoot out a few years ago.
However at this hour of America’s horrified grief, in which all decent people worldwide share, (Doing well so far) it is worth pointing out that there is a lesson here which, on past evidence, no US administration will choose even to hear, let alone learn. Here we go, he's going to blow it.
That lesson is this: if a suicide bomber walks into a crowded market in Iraq and blows himself up along with 32 innocent bystanders, it is terrorism. (True) If the same thing happens in America, it is not. (WHAT?!?!? Yes it IS terrorism, regardless of where is happens) Americans — and by extension anyone in the country — enjoy a constitutional right to bear arms. However anachronistic this may seem to outsiders given that the days of frontiersmen and citizens’ militias are long past, there still remains a powerful lobby, funded by the weaponry manufacturers themselves, that defends what it claims is a fundamental right.
Sorry buddy, the Constitution is what says it's a fundamental right.
Yet at the same time, the Americans lose no time in insisting that others around the world surrender their weaponry — whether the weaponry belongs to Afghan tribesmen, Iraqi neighborhood patrols or, on a larger scale, the nuclear arms of North Korea and the suspected Iranian atomic program. Arab news has long said that Iran shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons. Plus, when we're fighting against a force such as the Taliban, why should we leave them with weapons? The scale of the weapon is irrelevant. Uhh...yeah it is relevant. If I have a gun, I can only kill so many people. If I have a nuclear weapon, I could kill hundreds of thousands to even millions. There is an inherent moral contradiction in the rights that Americans seek to maintain for their own citizens and the demands they make on the citizens of other countries. We aren't making any demands against the Iranian or North Korean citizens, so your line of thought is bullshit so far. The unfortunate truth is that because the US has consistently sought to impose different standards on non-Americans, it has left itself open to charges of hypocrisy. Its partial treatment of Israel with its own nuclear weaponry, created from stolen or supplied US technology, only compounds this. Here we go, it's all the JEWS fault right? All nations naturally and understandably maneuver to gain the best advantage. It is part of the international power game. But America, the sole superpower, needs the trust of its friends and allies if it is to play an effective international role. So all nations can maneuver to gain the best advantage but America can't?
Its constant use of double standards destroys that trust. The damage unfortunately goes much further. Most Americans simply do not see the falsity of their own position. So sure are they of their own moral rectitude that they utterly discount the standards and concerns of others as either irrelevant or wrong. This is all the easier for them because of the widespread ignorance of the outside world which, in the present administration, extends from the man in the street all the way to the president himself. I seem to have a good grasp of international relations, especially when it comes to the Middle East. This lack of international knowledge and awareness is the more remarkable given that America is such a rich mix of races and cultures. Yet once within the capacious US borders, immigrants sign up to a constitution which includes this obsolete right to carry guns whose sole purpose is to kill. Tell that to the people who hold criminals at bay for the police or defend themselves or others from harm. Gangland murders and campus massacres by deluded youths armed with lethal firepower are the price Americans pay for this blindness. So criminals armed with guns are the reason why we should disarm ourselves? How will we defend ourselves? Though they may be terrified and deeply disturbed, they do not see such crimes as terrorism or indeed as constitutionally state-sponsored terrorism. So if it's state sponsored terrorism, then the government had a hand in the Virginia Tech massacre?
It's funny that this guy fails to mention the problems of his own country. REAL automatic weapons and explosives are available to just about anyone. Why else would there be terrorist attacks in the Middle East ALL THE TIME? We have our fair share of idiots and criminals, but we tend to treat them as idiots and criminals instead of "martyr's" who killed the "evil Jews" and are now heading up to heaven. Face it, if everyone in the Middle East would stop seeing terrorist attacks as "martyrdom missions" and start seeing it for the evil acts of terrible people the world would be a better place.
Travis
travis@rightwinglunatic.com
