Like clockwork, the attack in Mumbai brought out the gun nuts. The gist of their argument is "if the citizens only had guns they could have killed the bad guys!"
The thing I find really childish about these arguments is that they seem to be made primarily by white guys who want guns. They all make the same assumption: that the terrorists will be different in appearance from the general population. "If we had guns we could kill the bad guys." Like the bad guys are going to wear black hats or khaffiyehs? How would one have distinguished, say, Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols from any other Oklahoman trying to get into the Murrah building? Or the Beltway snipers from any other two black men? Or Eric Rudolph from any other white man? How about Paul Hill? In the case of Mumbai, how would South Asians be able to tell which of all the similarly-featured people in that chaos was a terrorist and which a civilian with a gun?
I think the gun nuts are racists. No doubt they'd say otherwise, loudly, but by their words shall we know them.
Posted by Linkmeister at December 1, 2008 03:41 PM | TrackBackAs an interesting aside, the off-duty cop who shot the Trolley Square guy in SLC is in trouble for, um, unprofessional conduct.
Whenever people talk about universal armament, I always agree. I want to carry around a loaded crossbow.
Posted by: Scott at December 1, 2008 06:54 PMLife's a RenFaire!
Posted by: Linkmeister at December 2, 2008 08:42 AM