I'll take a Big Mac, AK-47, and a side of ammo

Here is an article that explains contends that the reason for the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech is the lack of strong gun control laws in the United States.

I'm glad they cleared that up for me. Here I was, thinking the real cause was the fanatical bloodlust of this Cho Seung-Hui fellow.

His family must really be ticked off, seeing as his name is all over the news as the bad guy, when in fact, it's Charleston Heston's fault.

Perhaps that makes Mr. Cho Seung-Hui one of the "victims", given our senseless government and it's lack of gun controls.

And perhaps I am Mickey Mouse.

I mean, seriously folks: 3,000 people died on 9-11 because of a group of fanatics, armed with box cutters, wanted to kill them. Box cutters. Do you really think that this guy would have otherwise been sitting in his dorm room thinking, "Oh hey, I was going to shoot up the entire campus, but since I can't buy a gun from Wal-Mart anymore, I think I'll join the chess club instead."

Probably the most entertaining quote from this particular article comes under the caption of the first picture:

In America, "buying a machine gun is often easier than getting a driver's license."

A machine gun? Come on now. Granted, Amy points out that it's usually the trip to the DMV that *makes* you want to buy a machine gun, but I don't think that's what Der Speigel is getting at here. LOL.

In Britain, the Independent writes:

"The passionate feelings of the gun lobby may be traced to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, enshrining 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms'. Although the provision stems from the times when 'well regulated militias' were deemed necessary to protect against a British attempt to regain the lost colonies, it is the default position of any argument against greater gun control here."

Ugh. Not that I'd expect the Independent to be fully up-to-speed on the reasons for the second amendment, but the purpose of Constutional Rights is to protect citizens from their *own government*, not from a foreign government. We don't have the freedom of speech because we were worried the King of Spain would censor our newspapers, do we? I'd think the basic mechanics of why we have a Bill of Rights and a Constitution would be obvious to a journalist assigned to such political topics, but I guess that's not he case.

I'm sure that somewhere in the back offices of the Independent, there rests a dusty old dictionary like Webster's, which defines "bill of rights" as the following:

a summary of fundamental rights and privileges guaranteed to a people against violation by the state

Of course, we all know that Webster was just a ultra-right-wing militia-joining nut-job who was in cahoots with the shadow-government war cabal.

Or not.

On the other hand, all the "great" gun control laws in the U.K. aren't helping matters there. There rate of assault in this gun-free utopia is 7.5 per 1,000 residents. In the USA it's 7.6 per 1,000.

(And I certainly wouldn't want to try to, say, rob the home of the family shown in this picture I snagged from Google. Someone's getting the raw end of that deal, and I don't think it's going to be the young kiddos pictured here!)

In fairness, I will grant that the assault rate with firearms is much greater in the US than it is in the UK. Not that I'd feel much better if someone assaulted me with a chainsaw, kitchen knife, or large collection of Benny Hill tapes.

When discussing this article, my friend Scott quipped: "As if I'm going to listen to a bunch of socialist fools whose record on freedom adds up to 2,000 years of wars and serfdom."

But is that really fair? It's got to be really hard to overthrow all those kings, emperors, and warlords when all you can do is throw Benny Hill tapes at them, after all.