Why Can’t People Use This Tragedy To Assent To All Of Our Political Beliefs?

By now, dear reader, you have been thoroughly inundated with press reports regarding the horrendous mass killing at Virginia Tech University. The murderer perpetrated, of course, a series of acts that were—if you’ll pardon our retardataire moralistic vocabulary—unspeakably evil.

Unfortunately, these horrific acts have compelled lots of folks in the mainstream media to engage in particularly noteworthy examples of their usual peccadilloes. Certainly we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” weren’t the only ones to cringe at the cloying coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. In between bits of real compassion we noticed disgusting moments—reporters, for instance, attempting to drag the most tear-jerking phrases from the mouths of victims and eye-witnesses.

Perhaps equally irksome have been numerous reflections from the pens of self-important opinion journalists. They couldn’t even wait until the bodies were buried to have the same old fights about gun control. It’s almost as if these horrible events don’t take place in their minds; rather, they merely serve as catalysts for their preconceived political views.

Now, don’t get us wrong: We don’t feel particularly strongly one way or the other on the matter of gun control in America. Perhaps we’re somewhere in the squishy middle: We think outlawing weaponry will merely leave law-abiding citizens defenseless, but we shirk at the idea of people blithely purchasing assault weapons without child-proof locks.

Still, the panoply of “Can’t We Use This Tragedy To Destroy All Guns” articles and their corollary, the “Can’t We Arm Everybody To the Teeth To Stop All Future Tragedies” pieces, really bother us. These vapid essays appear so quickly that their authors don’t even have the time to reflect seriously on problems associated with their positions.

As much as our NRA-lovin’ folks hate to admit it, there are certainly problems with a completely libertarian stance on all gun ownership. And, as much as our anti-NRA types can’t stand it, banning all guns carries with it a number of problems. For once, we find ourselves in firm agreement with Harry Reid, who hoped that we could wait a bit to reflect seriously on making new laws regarding guns.

Ah, but our opinion journalists and “webloggers” will have none of it. To them, everything is simple: The world would be a Valhalla if we only had Sweden’s gun laws. Blah, blah, blah.

To make matters worse, these folks merely use horrid events like the Virginia Tech massacre to prop up views they have held long before they occurred. They haven’t learned a thing from these tragedies, merely seen them as political opportunities.

For some reason, this tactic seems especially to appeal to numerous leftists. To them, everything has a simple answer.

Why is there terrorism? Third-World poverty. Why did the US invade Iraq? To force the Third World to endure more poverty. Why does Wednesday follow after Tuesday? Third-World poverty.

Gee: What do you call an intellectual one-trick pony?