April 2007 Archives

Monthly temple update

So here's the latest version of the Draper temple. As you can see from the last entry, they've added some elevator towers and started framing.

April 24 2007:

Thoughts on gun laws

| 4 Comments

By now everyone has heard of the great tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech on Monday. I've read a lot about it the last few days, but today it seemed to have an increased impact as I looked at a table of victims' pictures put together by the NY Times. These were young, bright and promising kids who were senselessly murdered. It doesn't seem fair. It's not. But I believe God sorts things out at a later time.Anyway, this attack has me thinking about gun laws. While I've never owned a gun, I've always been pro-gun in the sense that it is in the constitution and some people hold the right to bear arms as sacred, so let them exercise that right. Plus, I've been shooting and small-game hunting many times in my life and it can be an enjoyable outing.On Monday, when the news broke, a colleague who is not from America asked me about the reasoning behind American gun laws. I know from talking with others as well that many people see Americans as cowboys, loaded up with guns. At any rate, I explained that it is in the constitution, and he expressed the thought that isn't that 2nd Amendment right for times past? It's a question asked by many, but I stick with the status-quo given there is no clear re-interpretation. At the same time, I can understand to some extent the frustration and disappointment voiced by anti-gun advocates who see guns frequently as a source of death for innocent people. In that context, I expected to see a lot of immediate anti-gun commentaries following the tragedy at VT. However, I was pleased to see that so far gun-control commentary has been generally muted until the emotion has worn off. One argument that has been mentioned is that it's too easy to get a gun in Virgina. The problem however, is that this doesn't seem to be applicable in this tragedy. Virginia laws state you can't buy more than one handgun in a month, but one of the guns was apparently purchased in Feb, showing some premeditation (so a longer delay wouldn't make a difference). Also, Mr. Cho (the perpetrator) had a clean history. Unless you do a psychological profile on every customer at the gun store, you wouldn't have found anything. In summary I don't see gun laws being the problem. It's a very tiny percentage of lawful gun-owners that get into gun trouble anyway. The trick is how to stop wackos and criminals from getting guns, and that doesn't fall under gun laws. What do you think?

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from April 2007 listed from newest to oldest.

March 2007 is the previous archive.

May 2007 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.