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Originally Posted by pigglet
I would just to point out an additional fact, which has been talked around to some extent (in my opinion) concerning the notion that students packing heat could have averted such a thing. In light of the improbability that an armed student would have actually gotten to this kid in time to do anything, the other aspect is the deterrence affect. The notion that knowledge, on the part of the shooter, that other students might have been packing would have made him rethink. I think that in light of his suicide, that is highly unlikely. It may have exacerbated the situation.
Not that it should be relevant, but I'm not an anti-gun nut. I own guns. I've shot guns. I was raised around guns. I still think the idea of a student population walking around on campus carrying handguns, shotguns, whatever...is absolutely nuts.
What's the law on having a handgun locked in your glove compartment? Anyone?
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I think for the common petty criminal, this knowledge of the possibility of guns being pointed at him would be a deterrent. However, with the recent evidence which has been revealed, it turns out that this asshole was stalking a specific girl for some time. In fact, she was one of the first ones he killed. He was just another pathetic sociopath. Though I'll admit that I'm still speculating, I believe his priority was to kill this one girl. Everything else he did was in addition to this primary goal, in which case he probably couldn't have cared less about being shot, since he would've shot the first bullets anyways.
As troubling as it is, I don't think there's anyway to stop this kind of behavior that wouldn't cut deeply into privacy and civil liberties. If the Patriot Act is as detrimental to civil liberties as it is, imagine if the government decided to probe into each of our daily lives to see if we were up to anything bad...
I doubt removing guns would've done anything to prevent this from happening. In this case, guns were the easy solution. By all likelihood, if guns weren't available to this guy, then he probably would've crafted a bomb of somekind to accomplish the same goal.