"Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns” - Mitch Ratcliffe

“Rural areas are lagging because they are the last front in the 1980s crime wave that started with crack in the big cities and put guns in the hands of kids in gangs and outside gangs.” - Alfred Blumstein

“They go from hand to hand to hand. For a lot of kids, it's harder to get their hands on a pack of cigarettes than it is to get a gun.” - Sergio Arqueta

About 14 years ago, a guy named Mark Lepine walked into one of the French junior colleges in Montreal; separated the women from the men in the auditorium or lecture hall he was in; let the men go free and proceeded to shoot to death about a dozen women, (I apologize...I don't remember exact numbers) injuring others, before he shot himself.

This event led directly to the establishment of a gun registry, which (although the police use it thousands of time a day now), the new Conservative government is yielding to the gun lobby (not quite as strong as in the States, but certainly getting there) and have announced that they are scrapping it this fall. In fairness, it has been a political hot potato for the previous government, when estimates to establish it were 1 or 2 million dollars, and they spent...get this, it's no typing error...over one billion dollars on it.

Well, last week, a "goth guy" walked into an English junior college in Montreal and opened fire. One girl was killed, four others are still in critical condition, and many were injured, before a policeman shot him in the arm, so he took his own life. The twisted thing here, though, is he wrote about it in detail on Myspace, even including pictures of him brandishing guns (all of which he owned legally by joining a gun club). People instantly started generalizing about black clothes or loud music or whatever make all goths (vegans in many cases) evil young people. Its like saying all Mexicans are lazy, or all gays are child molestors, or all white men cheat on their wives and vice versa.

So I learned something last night that chilled me to the very marrow of my existence. I decided to do a little experiment. I got onto Myspace and very quickly found a site for a "goth-like" kid. Then what I did, is at each place I visited, I would look down the list of "friend" entries, pick one, and move on to that one. Now, if you're not familiar with Myspace, almost every site has pictures of the owner.

The search I was doing (more accurately, the random trail I was following) very quickly led me away from the goths to something else. For your edification, let me share with you a small sampling of some of the pictures I found within half an hour of looking.

These pictures are posted openly on the internet, people. Why do we still keep asking "Why?" and pretend to be shocked everytime one of these tragedies occurs?

God help our children.

Like I said, God bless the children. In the meantime, we might as well stop pretending to be upset and alarmed and wringing our hands every time there's another slaughter like we saw last week. You can have one or the other, but not both. We get to keep the guns in an uncontrolled fashion, and put up with the population control that these maggots do from to time; or we control them, and make it a better, as well as safer, place to live. We can't have both. We've made our bed, we've chosen who will get heard first. So let's stop drivelling over the execution of an innocent young girl who just showed up to learn something one day. Just her tough bananas luck for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it hadn't been her, he would have gotten someone else.

PEACE.

Posted by Evydense on Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 7:30 a.m. | Permalink