Smash All the Tools

We are in an evolving relationship with our freedoms, personal security and national safety.  We look to other countries for examples and it appears that our media is loath to report failures of theirs.

Criminals and mad men always find tool to destroy.  They will not be denied.

England has remarkably tough gun laws, but crime still flourishes.  Even now they are attempting to crack down on knife ownership.

In New Zealand a 28-year-old man named Dickless* attacked unarmed worshipers at two different mosques.  In response New Zealand is increasing their gun control laws by banning guns with removable magazines and restricting freedom of speech by invoking hate speech laws and ordering citizens to burn any copies of Dickless’s diatribe. (Sidenote: NZ Dickless didn’t seem to believe in his principles so much as he stopped killing and surrendered to police when they approached him.)

These restrictions will fail to accomplish the desired goal: preventing other such tragedies.  Take Brazil for example.  Two men armed with various weapons, including one revolver, attacked a school in a suburb of San Paulo, killing five students and two adults.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/world/americas/brazil-school-shooting.html

Brazil is rigorous about gun ownership.  All firearms are registered with the government.  It’s illegal to carry for self-defense and special groups like police need a special permit.

To legally own a gun you’ve got to pay: a permit fee, registration fee, as well as purchasing the gun.  There seems to be a period of valid ownership at which point the owner must reapply.  In a country where the highest average yearly income is $10,656 and most live under that level, these fees are not trivial.  

Not having easy access to firearms these Dickless Wonders, both former students, attacked the school with knives, axes, crossbows and gasoline bombs.  Oh, and a revolver.

As usual, when faced with armed men or women who can fight back, they ended themselves.

Just a reminder, tools don’t have a good or bad personality.  It’s the user who determines the outcome.  Terrorists or any of their ilk, by their nature, need unarmed and unprepared victims. 

We are quick to jump up and demand a fix to this violence.  And we deserve a fix.  It is the nature of the fix that troubles us.  Too many people have their own agenda and they will use these acts of violence to further them.

Don’t accommodate them.

* Some studies indicate that other Dickless Wonders are inspired by these senseless acts in some attempt to hug the limelight.  This blog never mentions the names of these Dickless wonders who kill unarmed, helpless people.