People with guns kill people

The Virginia Tech tragedy (I hate that the networks are calling it "Massacre at Virginia Tech." Insensitive bastards ...) is yet another reminder of the horrible consequences of our gun-happy society.

Would Cho Seung-Hui have been able to kill 32 people with a knife, or his bare hands, or really any other weapon besides a gun? A bomb, maybe, but that's about it.

The gun lobby always says "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." No, people with guns kill people, at least more readily and more effectively than people without guns. The logic doesn't hold up.

And we look like a lawless society to the rest of the world.

There was harsh condemnation for U.S. gun control laws. In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday the university shooting in Virginia showed that America's "gun culture" was a negative force in society.

Howard, who staked his political leadership on pushing through tough laws on gun ownership in Australia after a lone gunman in his country killed 35 people in a spree, said the Virginia university shooting was a tragedy of a kind he hoped would never be seen again in Australia.

"You can never guarantee these things won't happen again in our country," Howard told reporters. "We had a terrible incident at Port Arthur, but it is the case that 11 years ago we took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," he said.

He offered his sympathies to the victims of the Virginia shooting and their families. In India, which has some 80,000 students in the U.S., commentators called for greater protection and stricter gun laws.

"It's not a question of an Indian professor getting killed in the firing. This is related to the American gun laws," said K. Subrahmanyam, a former member of India's National Security Council. "We can't do anything about it. It is something which has happened in the United States. They have got to change the law."

But as long as there are gun nuts who twist the Second Amendment into support for arming every man, woman, and child in America, there will be no change to the law. Never mind that the Second Amendment's dependent clause refers to the right to bear arms because "a well-regulated militia" is "necessary," meaning that said right is one for the military, or perhaps the National Guard, but not every freaking citizen.

No, this sad scene will be repeated over and over again, thanks to those misguided, fearful people who think the answer is more, not fewer, guns. How tragic. How stupid. How wrong.