VT Shootings

I think with every major news story like the Virginia Tech shootings, we have a big debate about what the government can do, or whether or not we should have more or fewer gun laws, or what the VT administration should have done differently, and it goes on and on and on.

Let's stop for a moment and examine our motivations in doing this. I think we've become conditioned to think that had the law been different (whether more regulatory or not) we'd have been able to avoid a shooting like this.

You know what? That's wrong. The truth is, people allow themselves to be overcome by evil, and no policy in a free society will ever be able to stop this sort of individually-adopted evil. The truth is, Cho Seung-Hui, the apparent shooter, made a choice -- or, more accurately, a series of choices -- that led him to this bloody and horrendous end. I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have mattered what the gun policy is, if he wanted to kill, he was going to.

It's only a matter of time until the two political sides in Washington will be using this tragedy to eek out another ounce or two of political mileage. They'll make a nice theatrical production out of it, to be sure, and when it's all said and done they'll pass some kind of regulation or policy that won't really do much except make them feel good that they're trying.

Maybe I need a vacation from my cynicism, but this cycle is so predictable, so laughably predictable, that it hardly requires thought to know it's coming.