Baby. Bathwater. Trouble Differentiating the Two.

Oh, bite me.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Once again there has been a mass shooting in the United States, this time in a Nebraska shopping mall. Once again there is no national outcry for gun control.

Hmmm. Why do I get the feeling Mr. Trotta is a wee bit disappointed with this development? Maybe he's not disappointed. Maybe, just maybe, he's just reporting the facts of the situation? Could it be?

A 19-year-old man shot and killed eight people and then himself in Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday with a semi-automatic AK-47 that police say he stole from his stepfather.

Leading presidential candidates for the November 2008 U.S. election issued statements expressing sorrow and support for the victims. None called for tighter gun laws, which are traditionally left to state and local authorities.

The crime revived memories of a massacre in April at Virginia Tech university, where a student killed 32 people.

There has been a string of such shooting sprees in recent years, but little resonance among national politicians.

Well, that's "factual" enough, but why am I still getting a faint whiff of disappointment that a national gun control melee hasn't broken out?

The right to bear arms is fiercely defended as a U.S. constitutional right by large numbers of collectors, hunters and advocates of home security, cherished the way civil libertarians champion the right to free speech.

Yet the issue is controversial enough to draw in the Supreme Court, which said last month it would review an appeals court ruling that struck down a 31-year-old ban on private possession of handguns in Washington, D.C.

"Although people who favor increased gun control in the United States are a substantial majority, those who oppose it are far more intense in their opposition and far more likely to vote on the basis of that issue alone," said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

He cited the 1994 elections when the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. Some political analysts attributed the rout to backlash against a Democratic-led ban on assault weapons. That law was allowed to expire 10 years later.

"I might want to qualify that judgment, but the fact that it's widely believed and that there is some basis for it is enough to determine political behavior," Galston said.

Hmmm... still that faint whiff of disappointment. Maybe he'll present the opposing side in the next little bit? Ya think?

A Pennsylvania state representative who last month helped defeat a proposal to limit hand gun purchases to one per person per month said he would support tougher sentencing laws for people who acquire and use illegal guns, but that law-abiding citizens should not have their rights infringed.

"I received thousands of e-mails with some of these gun control measures. Once again, it's the right to bear arms and many of our citizens don't want that right taken away," said Ron Marsico, chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee and a Republican.

Besides, he said, no law may have prevented the Omaha tragedy.

Wow. A bit of fairness has been introduced. A nasty mean legislator who helped defeat a measure in the Pennsylvania legislature that would have kept people to one handgun a month was quoted. Wooh. I'm impressed. Let's see how he finishes up. Who do you think he'll quote next? Someone from the NRA, perhaps?

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, disagrees. He said European countries have enacted effective gun control laws and that U.S. politicians are cowed by the gun lobby as exemplified by the National Rifle Association.

"There is the mythology advanced by the gun lobby of the Wild West and the individual frontiersman single-handedly holding off the British and the Indians and the bears simultaneously," said Helmke.

"They've got politicians nervous about anything that's even got the word gun in it."

Ah, he blew it. He went to the people responsible for the Brady Bill, who then played the stereotypical gun lobby/owner card. He might as well have said everyone wants a gun to go with their coonskin caps, because it's fashionable. And he brought up the all holy Europeans and their attitude towards gun control. Never mind the fact that while European countries have enacted strict gun control legislation, ahem, people are still being murdered in said countries. They're just being offed via knives, mostly, and other, more creative means of murder.

It's quite amazing to me that Trotta never really hits the reason why there hasn't been a revitalization of the gun control debate in the wake of the shooting in Omaha and that is, ahem, because the shooter was not right in the head. Increased gun control might have kept Hawkins from shooting shoppers and employees at Westroads, but who's to say that he wouldn't have done the same thing with a knife? Or some other deadly instrument? Yet, because the guy used an AK-47 that he stole, apparently we're supposed to be outraged enough to ban all handguns and assault rifles, despite the 2nd Amendment. That would be the logical response, evidently. That people aren't baying for Charlton Heston's blood seems inconceivable to Trotta.

I've said it before: I don't like guns. They scare the crap out of me. I've held a 9mm Glock in my cold, sweaty hands, and I did not like it one bit. Particularly after I found out that it doesn't have a safety on it. But my dislike of guns does not mean I'm going to impinge on someone else's right, by the Constitution of the United States of America, to have one. If they feel the need to defend themselves, and want a handgun to do it, so be it. If they feel they need a rifle to kill Bambi on a regular basis, well, since I'm a fan of venison, so be it. As long as they're law abiding citizens, I don't see what the problem is. Gun control laws only regulate people who purchase guns legally. It doesn't control the people who steal guns and then use them. Like Robert Hawkins. Who stole a n AK-47 and killed and wounded a goodly number of people. Trotta would seemingly have us believe that Hawkins---and all other shooters---is irrelevant, but that the bloody gun---and all other guns---are the most relevant things in the world.

I think not.

Posted by Kathy at December 7, 2007 02:24 PM | TrackBack