"People who trample on the Second Amendment, that's who."

Wise words from Ted Nugent, in response to a really horrid gun control essay crapped out by Tom Plate after the VT massacre. I've already written one reaction to the incident, but in riposte to Plates's essay, I wrote another, below (CNN's system would not let me submit it -- how convenient!):

Plate's editorial comes close to being totally irrelevant to the VT incident.

Firstly, I doubt Plate could rule out a less-than-smooth cultural adjustment from Korea to the US as a major factor in forming Cho's psyche. He also ignores the fact that many blaring warning alarms had been sounded regarding Cho's psychological condition before the shooting; if there is any "easy answer", it is that the state (especially Virginia) needs better public facilities to attend to such people. In fact, I have a close relative who is bipolar in that state, and I know from sad experience that its mental health services are abysmal. There are countless "mini-Cho" inicidents that you never hear about in Virginia and elsewhere -- involving the mentally ill on our streets and in our public institutions -- but this is only because the scale of each incident is not so large. Why can we spend so much on wars, but not on mental hospitals? Why do we have to ask the insane if we can -- pretty please -- commit them?

Next, Plate's idea of outlawing guns is rather puzzling. Does Plate think such legislation will be more successful than our current laws outlawing various (and often arbitrary) chemical drugs? All those seem to have done is failed at the intended goal and increased harm by fostering organized crime, bringing about dramatically-higher prices for the black market good, and sprouting a whole multi-tiered government and private prison complex that flourishes on the misery. Plate wants to extend this shameful system?

The next major point Plate discards is simply that guns allow for self-defense. The government cannot be everywhere to protect you from crime, because of the sheer numbers involved. Until last year, Virginia had not outlawed licensed concealed carry for its public university campuses. Based on at least one incident from that time, we know it is likely there would have students (or faculty) armed and possibly able to stop Cho at the time of the attack. We cannot know for sure in this particular case, but making it illegal for the law-abiding portion of the populace to use guns ensures that maniacs and the malicious will always have an advantage.

It is telling that Plate's mugging actually made him more docile. Me and Plate must be made of different stuff -- as I watch the crime inexorably rise around me, including at my own apartment complex, I have finally begun to seriously think about acquiring a gun to protect myself. The police apparently cannot or will not do anything in response to the crime. So now I don't feel safe, nor do I think of my home as a place I can store anything valuable. And I, too, am in a "nice" neighborhood.

Finally, Plate ignores the original motivation for the Second Amendment. It is not, contrary to popular belief, to keep the King of England from barging in to your living room. Aside from protecting you from criminals, guns are to protect you from the government. Read some Radley Balko if you don't think that cops and assorted Federal agents regularly barge in on innocent people looking for (or planting) drugs and other contraband. And given the way the government of this country is going, I would not put fascist or Stalinist-style purges beyond it -- the next round of Federal prosecutor purges could very well involve a different kind of "firing". If that day comes for me (as an unapologetic free thinker), I hope I will be armed well enough to make the act expensive for the aggressors, be they official or not.

P.S. - I am a VT alumnus.

Thanks to js290 for pointing these out to me.