Montreal college shooting
Here's the latest update:
This is why we need gun control. How Stephen Harper could get rid of the gun registry defies all logic. The U.S. needs gun control too. Most of the handguns used in crimes in Canada come into our country across the U.S. border (all while the U.S. is imposing stricter rules against our lumber and food substances). Guns weren't even invented when the "right to bear arms" was written into the Constitution; arms meant swords, not AK-47s.
One person has died in hospital as a result of the shooting rampage at a downtown Montreal college Wednesday that also left the gunman dead and 19 others injured.
Paramedics confirmed 20 people were taken to hospital with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to emotional shock following the shooting at Dawson College.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/
Pantagruelle published so as not to perish @ 19:40
8 marginalia
8 Marginalia:
The sick irony of this is, of course - speaking of the gun registry - that the registry was a result of lobbying by the families of the women who were killed in the Montreal Massacre. Now you have this incident occurring in the very same city. It's mind-boggling. I can't wait to see how Harper spins this, in the long term. Sigh.
Um, actually I think guns got to Europe during our beautiful 16th century. Pretty big import from the East, gunpowder. Probably played a huge part in the fireships that defeated the Spanish armada. Remember the gunpowder plot? I'm pretty sure guns were pretty big in the American Revolution (hence the right to bear arms amendment. It still very fresh in their minds). And also in the Enlgish civil war 130 years earlier.
And semiautomatics were definitely not invented at the time of the drafting of the US constitution.
However your point still stands. Gun control is totally necessary.
PS Sorry to be such a pedant. I know you really meant just that automatic and semiautomatic handguns weren't invented at the time of the US constitution. But the "right to bear arms" did indeed mean guns. And as a Renaissance scholars we have to remember how important gunpowder is to the advancement of English imperialism!
. . . and that's probably why the US will never have gun control if the Republicans Imperialists stay in charge.
Yes, we Ren people mustn't forget that gunpowder is one of the three greatest inventions of the early modern era.
But, yes, what I meant is that handguns, which can be concealed and which are more portable than the muskets that existed back then, and which don't need to be reloaded one shot at a time by sticking a big pole down the barrel, didn't exist back then. A drive-by on a horse with a musket just doesn't have the same impact as an AK-47 out the window of a speeding car. And precisely because of the Revolution, I think the bearing arms was intended as protection against tyrannical govts, not for citizens to turn on each other.
Driveby musketings! Sorry, point well taken. I guess I'm getting a little punchy. It's my lunch hour.
Arms meant swords? I always assumed it was a plea for anatomical correctness...
Well, yes, in the same sense as in the Renaissance a gentleman could wear a sword on this side but a peasant couldn't. It was class distinction. Enter the influence of the French Revolution--égalité, fraternité--on the American Revolution, and voilà, everybody gets to bear arms / wear a sword because there is (theoretically!) no more class distinction. But nobody was going to walk around with a musket strapped to their side or stuck down their trousers! Then (c.f. Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine) enter the Colt 45, which actually could be put in a holster, and it all goes to hell in a handbag.
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