While I was in India someone else back home was upset and shot and killed a couple of co-workers or strangers. I had to answer questions about "American craziness". But later, laying in bed in the middle of night with jet lag I thought about how frequent this peculiar phenomenon has become.
When I first arrived in Texas I was quickly made aware of the infamous Texas Sniper shooting. Whitman, a 26 year old UT mechanical engineering student and Marine veteran went on a shooting rampage from the top of the UT tower. He shot and killed 13 people over the course of 90 minutes. He had several hundred rounds of ammo and an arsenal of weapons. My first question back then was how did he acquire so many weapons and so much ammo without raising suspicions? He had bought two additional guns the day before - one from a gun shop that doesn't exist now but would have been a stone's throw of my current home and another from the Sears where I shopped later during my student years. This incident was doubly infamous because it was the first mass murder in the US.
Twenty five years later, in 1991 Texas returned to the limelight of mass shootings with the Luby's Cafeteria incident in Killeen near Austin which resulted in 22 deaths. The next big collective jolt that I recall was Columbine. Around that time were the spate of "going postal" killings. A few years later was the horrible and massive Virginia Tech shooting. The next one that sticks in my mind was again close to home - when US Army psychologist Nidal Hassan shot and killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood. And then it seemed to happened a lot more frequently. Till this summer when it became a weekly occurrence. Since July I recall the Dark Knight Rising, Sikh temple, Manhattan, Cedar Park Walmart, and Texas A&M. Wow.
This has resulted in much discussion about gun control. The Assault Weapon Ban from the Clinton era expired in 2004 and doesn't have much hope of being revived though Obama promised to do so in the first 100 days of office the last time he was campaigning. The most significant gun control in recent years in the US is also the Clinton era Brady Act. Brady was Reagan's press secretary and was shot and injured during the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, leaving him partially paralyzed. The attempted assassin should not have been sold a weapon by anyone in their right mind. The Brady Act is based on the notion of background checks as a method to minimize the chances of such a thing from happening again. Gun control opponents say that this does not affect the millions of illegal weapons out there. Neither does this affect the sale or transfer of millions of already existing legal weapons because it only applies to licensed dealers (I can still sell my gun to a drooling psychopath without being required to register the sale or perform a background check). Many studies estimate that there are approximately somewhere between 200 and 300 million guns in our collective backyard. So one should rightly consider today's gun control laws as a sieve through which millions of crackpots who desire guns can acquire them without background checks.
In the last decade over 100 million guns have been sold in the US in accordance with the Brady Act. About 1% of the Brady background checks failed. Holmes - the Dark Knight Rises killer - passed with flying colors. So did most of the other shooters from this summer of killing. They bought their weapons legally after background checks. Ironically Holmes would not have been able to legally acquire his most lethal gun, the AR-15 with the 100 round magazine, under the AWB Law that expired in 2004.
Problem is, gun control efforts, unless radical (something crazy like: everyone hand over your weapons, and moving forward you can only buy single shot rifles and 10 rounds of ammo after a month of psychiatric testing and a security clearance-style background check) won't matter. Because people who appear sane and don't have any criminal backgrounds will occasionally buy guns legally and go off and kill bunches of us. That's the reality.
Every death hurts whatever the cause. Due to the novelty, deadly consequences, violence and meaninglessness of the mass shooting phenomenon, we have allocated a disproportionately large amount of discussion, thought and fear to it. Driving is still far more dangerous to your health. How much more? Even if there were 15 different incidents of mass shootings a DAY in each of which at least 5 people were killed you'd more likely bite it while driving.
So chill and stop worrying about gun control. If you want to live longer take public transit or fly. If you happen upon this post fifty years from now, Vivian or Evan, I'd be curious to know how things turned out. On second thought (and calculations) I wouldn't.
When I first arrived in Texas I was quickly made aware of the infamous Texas Sniper shooting. Whitman, a 26 year old UT mechanical engineering student and Marine veteran went on a shooting rampage from the top of the UT tower. He shot and killed 13 people over the course of 90 minutes. He had several hundred rounds of ammo and an arsenal of weapons. My first question back then was how did he acquire so many weapons and so much ammo without raising suspicions? He had bought two additional guns the day before - one from a gun shop that doesn't exist now but would have been a stone's throw of my current home and another from the Sears where I shopped later during my student years. This incident was doubly infamous because it was the first mass murder in the US.
Twenty five years later, in 1991 Texas returned to the limelight of mass shootings with the Luby's Cafeteria incident in Killeen near Austin which resulted in 22 deaths. The next big collective jolt that I recall was Columbine. Around that time were the spate of "going postal" killings. A few years later was the horrible and massive Virginia Tech shooting. The next one that sticks in my mind was again close to home - when US Army psychologist Nidal Hassan shot and killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood. And then it seemed to happened a lot more frequently. Till this summer when it became a weekly occurrence. Since July I recall the Dark Knight Rising, Sikh temple, Manhattan, Cedar Park Walmart, and Texas A&M. Wow.
This has resulted in much discussion about gun control. The Assault Weapon Ban from the Clinton era expired in 2004 and doesn't have much hope of being revived though Obama promised to do so in the first 100 days of office the last time he was campaigning. The most significant gun control in recent years in the US is also the Clinton era Brady Act. Brady was Reagan's press secretary and was shot and injured during the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, leaving him partially paralyzed. The attempted assassin should not have been sold a weapon by anyone in their right mind. The Brady Act is based on the notion of background checks as a method to minimize the chances of such a thing from happening again. Gun control opponents say that this does not affect the millions of illegal weapons out there. Neither does this affect the sale or transfer of millions of already existing legal weapons because it only applies to licensed dealers (I can still sell my gun to a drooling psychopath without being required to register the sale or perform a background check). Many studies estimate that there are approximately somewhere between 200 and 300 million guns in our collective backyard. So one should rightly consider today's gun control laws as a sieve through which millions of crackpots who desire guns can acquire them without background checks.
In the last decade over 100 million guns have been sold in the US in accordance with the Brady Act. About 1% of the Brady background checks failed. Holmes - the Dark Knight Rises killer - passed with flying colors. So did most of the other shooters from this summer of killing. They bought their weapons legally after background checks. Ironically Holmes would not have been able to legally acquire his most lethal gun, the AR-15 with the 100 round magazine, under the AWB Law that expired in 2004.
Problem is, gun control efforts, unless radical (something crazy like: everyone hand over your weapons, and moving forward you can only buy single shot rifles and 10 rounds of ammo after a month of psychiatric testing and a security clearance-style background check) won't matter. Because people who appear sane and don't have any criminal backgrounds will occasionally buy guns legally and go off and kill bunches of us. That's the reality.
Every death hurts whatever the cause. Due to the novelty, deadly consequences, violence and meaninglessness of the mass shooting phenomenon, we have allocated a disproportionately large amount of discussion, thought and fear to it. Driving is still far more dangerous to your health. How much more? Even if there were 15 different incidents of mass shootings a DAY in each of which at least 5 people were killed you'd more likely bite it while driving.
So chill and stop worrying about gun control. If you want to live longer take public transit or fly. If you happen upon this post fifty years from now, Vivian or Evan, I'd be curious to know how things turned out. On second thought (and calculations) I wouldn't.
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