Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Fatal Shooting In Roanoke

posted by Winston Smith at 12:30 PM

2 Comments:

Blogger Pete Mack said...

Hari Sheldon rule. No info published about the killer except "thing 1." No information about the crime other than it happened. And burial in a pauper's grave. These guys feed on each other.

11:23 PM  
Blogger The Mystic said...

If only I thought the problem were so simple to resolve..

I'm afraid this sort of issue is simply going to happen so long as there are people on the planet. There's a whole lot of talk about gun violence and whatnot, but isn't the real problem that people like this dude exist, and insofar as we grant ourselves liberties, they'll be around to take advantage of them?

Truth be told, given the sheer volume of assholes and crazy people I've encountered, I'm still surprised this doesn't happen far more often than it does. It's clear that it takes virtually nothing other than being an intensely angry asshole to accomplish this sort of thing.

This isn't a blanket argument against regulations such as the one you propose or restrictions on weapon ownership or what-have-you, but it's a fact I fear is often lost in discussions about responses to this sort of stuff.

My opinion, though, is that the best general policy to be raised against this sort of stuff is probably more along the lines of alleviating the general socioeconomic malaise gripping so much of the nation. I don't want to run the risk of sounding like a stereotypical Marxist-esque reductionist, but if we're witnessing a hum generated by a section of the population cracking under the pressures of modernity, maybe working to alleviate them as generally and as efficaciously as we can is the best way to go. Seems like some obvious (yet perhaps not obviously/directly related to "gun violence") socioeconomic reform is where we arrive if we follow that line of reasoning.

The current mainstream debate between gun control and mental health support, whatever their merits and demerits, have seemed perhaps unified in the grip of tunnel vision. We may need to help people before they get to the point where those kinds of assistance and controls are necessary.

11:56 PM  

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