Great and good friend of the blog RoadRich sent us an email yesterday. I liked it so much, I’m making it the very first guest post here (with RoadRich’s permission).
I saw yet another article on the USC murder spree. And though I’m not prone to rant, it seems this got me in a ranting mood once again. Of course it helps to preach to the choir.
I give the family lots of credit for earlier trying to get someone to take notice of the violent tendencies of their own son… which by itself is monumental… and I credit the family again for rushing to the developing scene (as the news reports indicate). The family of the murderer tried to save lives, weeks before it came to this.
However, the blame that the father of one victim levies on the NRA, and on politicians for not tightening gun laws, aims to hide the elephant in the room, which of course are the first three victims in this killing spree. Long before a person was killed by Elliot Rodger’s gun, two of his roommates plus someone who apparently had been visiting, were felled by Elliot Rodger’s knife.
By itself, the three stabbing victims may well have been called a ‘mass murder’, perhaps. And if the rampage by an overprivileged, self-important madman had stopped there, it would have still shaken Santa Barbara. But because the rampage moved on and changed to the weapon most feared by an uninformed or misinformed public, we are treated to a blind demand for gun laws. This shamefully ignores those who were killed by means other than bullets as somehow less important deaths. What do gun laws protect the stabbing victims from? What would more laws have done to save /anyone/ from someone who is willing to violate the law against murder? Is the loss by the parents of David Wang, James Cheng and George Chen any less important than that felt at the deaths of Veronika Weiss, Katherine Cooper or Christopher Michael-Martinez?
Of course we know what made the madman stop. It was someone who could defend himself, and whose job it was to defend others. It was someone with a gun, who ended a knife killing spree, a gun killing spree, and very nearly a car killing spree.
I feel bad for all the victims’ families. Yes, even the parent of Martinez, who is rightfully outraged. But between you and me, I would hope that someone Farq’s the article with the headline “Parent seeking tighter gun laws ignores stabbing victims” or “Parent doesn’t see stabbing deaths as victims” or something like that.