DIANA REPUBLIC

Let me be clear, I don’t like guns. I see no value in BB guns. Boys use then to shoot very dangerous cans and bottles off fences in preparation for their real prey: squirrels. I am not sure I really understand paint ball.  A group of friends get together for an afternoon of shooting each other in a rural setting? And I have been told those suckers hurt. It turns out the only guns that I can get behind are those loaded with water. I have even been known to use the automatic weapon of the water gun family: the super soaker. But other than that, I don’t like guns, really.

So it is with admitted prejudice that I heard here about the Wisconsin online gun dealer Eric Thompson who sold gun accessories to George Sodini, the shooter in the recent Pennsylvania health club incident. The same dealer sold guns or gun accessories to the shooters in the Virginia Tech incident as well as the shooting at Northern Illinois University. According to NPR, Mr. Thompson, while condemning the actions of the shooter,  claimed that this incident underscored the need to have guns for protection when law enforcement can’t respond in time.

Really?? Really? So in this self serving jack asses’ perfect world there would have been cops in the weight room who could have reacted more quickly? And  I suppose the women in the class could have all protected themselves from the shooter, in the dark, if they had had pistols stashed in their leg warmers? Really?

Mr. Thompson also contends that these men could have purchased the same items from their local WalMart. That may be true, but they didn’t. I suppose Mr. Thompson has to tell himself something to get to sleep at night. Something other than repeating his net worth over and over again as he drifts off.

I grudgingly concede that those who choose to, have the right to bear ams (or buy guns as it were) – I have said this before here. I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems suspect that these three tragedies have one online gun dealer in common. If I were to subscribe to the notion that simply says that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” then I would have to add that without access to guns people would have a much harder time killing each other. Now access to water guns – that is a different story .