Sniper hits Home Depot parking Garage

[KaBar]

I don't really want to get involved in a big argument about this, but it is absolutely true that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." I think that attributing this line to "some backwoods hick from Kentucky" is an attempt to denigrate the clear truth of it, and it also betrays a sort of classist, condesending attitude towards rural whites.

 

A true murderer doesn't require any firearm at all, they kill people with whatever happens to be laying around. The firearm is simply a tool. Yes, it makes it easier to murder people. IT ALSO MAKES IT EASIER TO DEFEND YOURSELF FROM AN ATTACKER. As far as I'm concerned, HANDGUNS ARE A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND. God made men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.

 

I guess I don't need to point out that the 9/11 skyjackers used no firearms in their seizure of the airliners. They used boxcutter knives, available in any hardware store for a couple of dollars.

 

The photograph of the rifle portrayed on the news last night was a civilian copy of the AK-74 rifle. The original 1974 Russian version fired a 5.45mm ComBloc cartridge, but many of the AK-74 clones imported to the U.S. were chambered for the more-popular-in-the-U.S. 5.56mm/ .223 cartridge. The guy might actually be a member of a terrorist cell, or perhaps a crazy sympathizer of the Al-Queada cause. Either way, the fact that NOBODY IN D.C. IS ARMED certainly helps this guy in his little murder campaign. He can be almost certain that no bystander will be carrying a pistol, because of the super-restrictive gun laws in Washington D.C. (Which I'd like to point out, have done little to slow down the murder rate in D.C., to say nothing of preventing this nut job from killing nine innocent people.)