While checking email today I found a sad bit on news posted by the Associated Press. You can read it while it's fresh here.
In summary, one guy walked up to an armored truck, shot a guard, shot the second guard, grabbed a bag of money and fired upon the third guard before driving off.
"He just came out initially and just assassinated them, that fast," Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said.
Of course, Mr. Johnson wasted no time at all decrying how easy it is to acquire firearms and attempting to shift blame to a nebulous "societal ill." He was then quoted making one of the most daft lines of utter shit I've heard in a long time, "Every other country has the same problems we have. The one problem they didn't have is our gun problem ... A robbery with a knife or a baseball bat, somebody might have been injured. A robbery with a gun, somebody's killed."
What the fuck fantasy land are you living in, bud? Nevermind that this country has had firearms dispersed through the citizenry since the landing of the colonists. Set aside for the moment, that no one has the least clue just how many guns are actually distributed across the continent and so even if mankind never made another firearm again, it would be centuries at least before they stopped turning up. The fact this critter used a firearm is immaterial to the crime.
It was a direct, brutal, and short assault. They guy knew exactly what he was doing and how. Before he even made his approach, he'd committed himself to killing the three guards. He executed the two outside with fluid dispatch. It doesn't matter that he used a gun in this instance, I don't think it would have slowed him in the least or made him any less lethal if he'd used a knife or a club. If someone in intent on murder, the tool they use is simply window dressing.
I'm fed up with this crap that getting murdered with a knife, tent-stake, chain, brick, or what-have-you is magically better than being killed by a bullet. I've seen blade wounds close up. I've seen damage from blunt impact. There is no bloody way in hell you can tell me it's not as serious as getting hit with a bullet. Guns take aim to put a tiny chunk of heavy metal through something vital. They're fast and give you the benefit of distance, but anyone can stave in someone else's skull with a rock without any skill beyond being able to pick it up. I may have a good chance of killing someone using a gun, but a guarantee I can send someone into the hereafter with something lower tech.
A weapon is a fucking weapon and unless you're advocating putting everyone into a vegetative state, there is no way to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would use them unlawfully because ANYTHING can be a weapon with the right mindset. There is no way the guy who robbed that armored truck did not have have that mindset.
Far I am now concerned, Sylvester Johnson has just proved he's a fucking idiot who shouldn't be allowed laces in his shoes because he's more interested in "feewings" than rational thought.
