Another Shooting Spree, This Time Oregon

Image from source, Raw Story

It's hard to defend my sort of Switzerland status in regard to guns these days. As I've said time and again, I was raised around guns and have no particular aversion to people having them for hunting and protection. And as I've also said--that said--I also have issues with people who fetishise guns, and think that the 2nd amendment was etched in stone by God, ahead of all other amendments, acts, laws and commandments.

So I come somewhere in the middle. Except there is no middle, and there is no meaningful opposition any more either. If you're Bob Costas and you react to a (different, earlier) shooting in the mildest of terms, you are excoriated by the gun clingers. You'll be told that any sort of regulation of any kind of guns will only take the guns out of the hands of the good guys (even though in most of these shootings, legal guns were used). You'll be told that if only there were more armed people, all would be rosy. Which is bananas. But mostly you'll be told that, well, that's just the way it is. We have to be allowed to have guns, so we're going to have to tolerate the occasional shooting spree. It's the way it goes, nothing can be done about it. Cest la vie. Which is a bit out of character for conservatives when you consider their reaction to 9/11, but I digress. . .

[Excerpt]

At least three dead, including gunman, in Oregon mall shooting

At least two people were killed when a masked gunman opened fire at a mall in the western US state of Oregon, sparking panic before apparently turning the gun on himself, police said. At least one person was also injured in Clackamas, south of Portland, a sheriff’s spokesman said, after local media reported a gunman wearing body armor opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle near a Macy’s department store. . .

Read more at: The Raw Story