Various quotes from the article:
And here at home, we've seen the damage ordinary weapons can do in the wrong hands. More American civilians died in the Virginia Tech gun rampage than were killed by terrorists worldwide in the entire year of 2006.
Interesting point. This is one of the reasons that I don't worry about islamic terrorists hiding under the bed, but I carry a gun anyway. Because we have crazies and sociopaths aplenty, and they're usually not motivated by ideology.
Is ideological violence more terrifying than when people are killed for no apparent reason at all? Does this ideological motivation for violence, even though the violence is objectively less frequent and deadly, mean we have to give up our fundamental rights?
The anti-gun control position also glosses over the use of firearms in the last 15 years by terrorists like Mir Aimal Kansi, who shot CIA employees on their way to work; Rashid Baz, who shot Yeshiva students crossing the Brooklyn Bridge; Ali Abu Kamal, who shot visitors at the Empire State Building; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who shot travelers checking-in at the El Al ticket counter at LAX Airport; and Naveed Afzal Haq, who shot six people at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
Hundreds are murdered for non-ideological reasons every year in Washington DC, and this sparse list over the last 15 years is supposed to scare me?
By the way, did they buy their guns at wal-mart? Because I'm guessing that a terrorist who wants to be successful will buy on the black market. I'm willing to bet money these were black market buys, else the author would be crowing about how they were bought over the counter.
The death toll in those cases never reached the double-digits. But as the Virginia Tech case illustrates, all one needs is an abundant amount of reload ammunition, a densely populated soft target, and the will to kill to produce dozens of deaths in just minutes.
Yep, it's all one needs. Thanks for making my point for me.
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Being placed on a 'watch list' requires no judicial oversight; no process of law. Why then would we allow people to lose fundamental rights based on the whim of opaque and increasingly unaccountable federal agencies?
It's a civil rights issue, and until we can succeed in framing the debate in this way, this sort of argument will be common.