Eric, here's another thing to consider. I don't know if you heard this already.
One guy fails at trying to shoe-bomb an airline. We now have to take off our shoes every time we go through airport security. Same with those jerks who tried smuggling liquid explosives. Now a bottle of baby formula is looked at suspiciously. And thanks to the underwear bomber, we all get to show off our sexy physiques in body scanners.
Are they helping to reduce the threat of terrorism? Yeah right, nothing replaces the courage of the passengers on Flight 93, or the passengers who tackled the shoe bomber to the floor. Terrorists will never hijack a plane again, as long as the memory of 9/11 stays fresh in the minds of every person in the world. Kind of like El Al airlines.
But now after Gabby Giffords, the "Joker" at the movie theater, Clackamas Town Center, and now Newtown, CT, I'm going to drop my objections to more gun regulations. We're being terrorized by suicidal maniacs, only this time they're not doing it in the name of Allah, and they're not acting as part of any cell or ideology. Hence we can't go after the source of the problem, except maybe mental health care.
By the way, a while ago I was a participant in a police training exercise held at a Portland elementary school. I even got to play the "bad guy" holding the school hostage while police officers in teams of five went in, looked for a guy like me, and opened fire with soap bullets. Training like this was credited for maybe preventing the Clackamas Town Center shootings from being much worse, since the police this time went in without waiting for SWAT.
Too bad the utter asshole in CT then stole the headlines a mere two days after Clackamas. And I'm not sure what police training could have done in this situation. Maybe random armed guards in our schools can help, as well as movie theaters, malls, train stations, etc. Why not turn the same kind of training we give our Navy SEALs who took out Bin Laden into something we can use for domestic security?
Until then, we'll have to get used to more gun control, because that's the default solution being brought up, and I no longer want to argue against it.
Tenchusatsu |
