'Moronic' media exploit tragedy

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The outrages never stop. Yesterday, the leftist media couldn't even wait for the bodies at Virginia Tech to be counted before pouncing on the opportunity to exercise its presumptuous, biased and agenda-driven advocacy journalism.

At a midday White House press conference, while police were still clearing buildings and trying to answer questions surrounding the event hadn't even begun to be answered, reporters demanded to know if President Bush would now support additional gun control. Press secretary Dana Perino was at a loss for words.

It was a gratuitously partisan, and plainly rhetorical question for any reporter to be asking at such a time, and they knew it. But they never seem to miss an opportunity to press their agenda, no matter how inappropriate or idiotic.

But since they are so blatantly asking such partisan, tactless, moronic questions, let's call them on it. For starters, why on earth should a bad idea like gun control suddenly morph into a good one simply because this time, more people were killed? If gun control were not a good idea after (or before) Columbine -- and it wasn't -- why now? Does anybody seriously think we should suddenly have a change of heart just because this time the massacre claimed more lives? Are they discounting the deaths of Columbine, Stockton, San Ysidro and elsewhere? Have the facts not conclusively proved that no gun control, existing or perceived could have prevented those prior shootings? To the contrary.

It is fact time. Most of those grisly massacres could have been prevented had armed citizens been on scene at the time they occurred. And in those cases where armed citizens were able to intervene, the death toll was radically reduced. This was the case in 2002, when Virginia Appalachian Law School students used personally owned firearms recovered from their vehicles to disarm a gunman who had already killed three persons. This event went virtually unreported by the mass media. Wonder why?

A bill proposed last year in the Virginia legislature would have allowed students, employees and faculty with concealed carry permits to keep firearms on campus, but that bill was killed by the General Assembly. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said, "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions, because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." I guess feeling safe is more important to Virginia Tech administrators than being safe. What would they say now?

Since liberal Virginia politicians saw fit to deny the opportunity of self-defense to law-abiding citizens on Virginia campuses, this time nobody was around to put a quick end to the carnage. We have people like them to thank for yesterday's carnage. You have blood on your hands.

Similarly, in 1984, thanks to restrictive gun-control laws in California, hapless victims could do nothing but stand by as a deranged shooter killed 21 persons at a San Ysidro McDonald's. A SWAT team waited idly by for 56 minutes because their leader, the only one who could authorize use of deadly force, was stuck in traffic.

The liberal gun-control model exhibits an ignorance of facts and a failure in critical thinking not once, but many times over. First, it absurdly presumes that people intent on mass murder can be thwarted by a silly bureaucratic restriction on their ability to access arms legally. Second, it places the burden of protection from such events on police, an impossible task both because police are rarely on scene at the initiation of such events and, as law enforcement officers, are restricted to reacting belatedly after the crime has occurred. Furthermore, liberals' virtually relentless campaign against effective police methods is painfully illustrated in the San Ysidro experience detailed above.

The liberal model implicitly presumes the vast majority of American citizens are untrustworthy and incapable of responsible firearms ownership and use, an assumption belied by a 200-plus-year history of essentially crime-free legal ownership of firearms. Last but not least, you are arguing against our Bill of Rights, that list of fundamental rights that has, so far at least, guaranteed the fundamental security of our constitutional republic.