Why does the Virginian Pilot want children to die?

He headline is rhetorical of course.  The editors of the Virginian Pilot don’t really want to see little children get slaughtered.  The fact is that while mass murder gets 24/7 news coverage, it’s occurrence is so rare that there is a better chance of being hit by lightning than being murdered by a crazed killer on a spree as happened in Connecticut recently.   

Of course the incidence of violence directed at the President is enough to surround him by dozens of armed guards and armored limousines.  Despite what Leftists say about guns, if they are rich or powerful enough they surround themselves with big men with lots of guns. 

So why does the Virginian Pilot make recommendations that will have no real effect on some copycat wishing to replicate Adam Lanza?  Probably because they see no real threat but are taking this opportunity to lobby for gun control. 

 

Today’s Virginian Pilot has an editorial about its answer to the murder of the little children and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut.  None of its recommendations, not a single one, would have stopped the slaughter.  For your edification, here is the Virginian Pilot’s wish list:

·         Congress must close the "gun show loophole" and require universal background checks.

o   Adam Lanza, the killer in Newtown did not buy the guns he used so he would not have been stopped with a background check.  Neither did he obtain the guns at a gun show.  The guns he used were his mother’s.  There is every reason to believe that his mother who actually bought and owned the guns met Connecticut’s very strict gun control laws.  If not, that information would have come forward by now.

·         Stop the sale of “assault weapons” which high capacity magazines.

o   The term “assault weapon” is used by the ignorant fools in the press to describe any gun that looks like a gun used in one of the many shoot-them-up movies or video games.  The same movies that inspired quite a number of murders.  Ending the sale of “scary looking” guns with large magazines would not have done anything to stop Adam Lanza since they already exist in large quantities.

·         Buy back programs.

o   This is another example of the Virginian Pilot’s desire to never let a crisis go to waste.  In this case throwing all of their pet gun projects into the mix while people are still in shock from the gruesomeness of the crime.  The fact is that scientists are unable to find any reduction of crime or violence as a result of gun buyback programs.  But they make people who don’t know much about science feel good about themselves.  A gun buy-back program would not have stopped Adam Lanza.  His mother, who actually owned the guns wanted them.

·         Re-criminalize possession of new magazines with more than 10 bullets.

o   Note the adjective “new.”  Adam Lanza used an existing gun with an existing magazine.  Millions of these exist now.  The passage of a law today means that we have at least a 100 year supply.  Adam Lanza would have no trouble under the Virginian Pilot’s regime to go out, get one of the millions of “scary looking guns” with large capacity magazines  and  kill again.  All he had to do is go to his mother’s gun safe.

·         Devote more funding to identifying and treating people with mental illness.

o   This could possibly have had some effect, if we did not live in a country where the ACLU would prevent the only effective way of handling Adam Lanza.  First you have to find him and subject him to involuntary institutionalization.  I wonder how the Virginian Pilot would like that?  There is a story out there that the thing that set Adam Lanza off was his mother’s desire to have her son declared mentally ill and treated.  So it seems as of the Virginian Pilot’s recommendation may actually cause a few more Adam Lanza’s to go on a killing spree. 

In the same issue of the Virginian Pilot, they have an editorial cartoon that makes fun of Governor McDonnell’s interest in considering the use of guards or police in schools.  We are told by no less an authority as the New York Times that about one-third of our schools already have police or armed guard protection in the building, so why does the Virginian Pilot advocate actions that would not have stopped Adam Lanza and ridicule something that may have stopped him before he killed 26 helpless, unarmed people?  I will not try to psychoanalyze the Virginian Pilot’s motives, but it appears that an anti-gun philosophy does not allow them to accept the fact that the best defense against a crazed killer is a good guy with a gun.

It also means that if the Virginian Pilot’s objectives are achieved, it will only be a matter of time before another “gun-free zone” will be the venue of another slaughter.