The Norway massacre - lambs to the slaughter???

I'm sure all my readers are familiar by now with the tragic events of last Friday in Norway, where almost a hundred people were killed by what appears, at present, to have been the actions of a single murderer. (I won't dignify him by calling him a 'guerilla' or 'terrorist' or 'partisan' of any kind - he's nothing more or less than a murderer, and cowardly to boot. You'll have noticed he didn't take on any armed opponents at all, and immediately surrendered when police were finally able to reach the island where he killed most of his victims. He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'courage'.)

However, there are three aspects that jump right out at me. First, this is a classic illustration of what happens when you disarm the good guys. That means only the bad guys will have guns, which gives them the opportunity to do this sort of thing without much fear of retaliation. If there had been one or two trained adults on that island, armed with their personal weapons, they might have been able to intervene and stop the massacre. As it is, the gunman had one and a half hours in which to calmly walk around, unchallenged, stalking his victims and killing them.

Second, how the hell do Norwegians bring up their youth? Why did none of the young people on the island try to tackle the gunman? By the time I reached my teens, I'd been taught by my father that one shouldn't just sit back and let evil happen to you - one should do one's darnedest to stop it, and if that wasn't possible, one should do all one could to protect others and give them time to get away, even if it meant being injured or killed oneself. That's part of what it means to be a man. Yes, the feminists will doubtless hate that suggestion, but it's the way I was raised, and it's been the way men have been raised for countless generations . . . except for the last couple of generations, it seems. Why did those kids just run around like chickens with their heads cut off? Why didn't they resist? Even if they'd thrown stones at the gunman, or tried to tackle him with a spade, or a baseball bat, or a chair taken from the dining-room . . . anything, rather than just scream and run and hide!

(Note to parents everywhere: if you haven't had a talk like that with your children, may I suggest that now might be a very good time to start? Tell them about the Norway massacres. Tell them about Beslan. The odds that our children might have to face something similar are, very sadly, not as slim as they once were . . . and I'd hate your kids to die while running like rabbits, instead of standing up for what is true and good and right, even if that costs them their lives. If worst comes to worst, I respectfully submit it's better to die like a lion than a jackal. That's not a comment on last Friday's victims; it's a general statement of principle.)

Finally, I note that already the usual suspects are trying to use this incident to focus on the gunman's tools, rather than his evil nature and actions. Here's just one example.

The increasing availability of automatic weapons makes mass killing easier, even by a single individual.

. . .

If terrorists can use firearms to achieve similar levels of destruction without taking on the operational risk of using bombs, we can expect them to do so.

. . .

... firearms are increasingly a weapon of choice for terrorists; reasonable restrictions on the sale and distribution of automatic weapons make sense. We monitor the sale of precursor chemicals for the construction of bombs; we should monitor the most dangerous guns as well.

There's more at the link. Tamara links to another, similar screed.

Let's be clear. Yes, firearms make it easier for evil men to do their evil work: but they also make it possible for good men to resist armed evil men! To blame the instrument involved, rather than the hands wielding it, is insane. A gun can be used for good or for evil, just like a car, or fertilizer, or petroleum products. All three of the latter appear to have been used by the perpetrator to construct a car bomb, which killed several people in Oslo before his rampage with a gun in a youth camp. I haven't noticed anyone calling for cars, or fertilizer, or diesel fuel to be more strictly controlled, or banned, as a result of his actions . . . but then, they're not a politically convenient target, are they? As noted above, if more good people had been armed on that island, it's likely that far fewer people would have died - in fact, if the perpetrator had known he might have had to face armed opponents, it's possible that he wouldn't have gone there at all! He clearly had an instinct for self-preservation, as evidenced by his immediate surrender to responding officers.

The gun is conscienceless, motiveless. It has no objective moral value of its own. It's just a tool. Don't blame the gun for evil - blame the one using it for evil purposes. Furthermore, let's acknowledge the simple fact that in most Western societies, firearms are so tightly controlled by the State as to be almost impossible for law-abiding citizens to obtain . . . but the bad guys get their hands on them anyway. Legislating against something merely makes it harder and/or more expensive to obtain - not impossible. I submit alcohol and drugs are evidence of that reality. In the same way, to try to over-control anything is pointless. In the case of firearms, if evil men are deprived of them by some legislative, executive or judicial miracle (and a miracle will be required!), they'll simply find other ways to do their work; car bombs, or poison, or fires, or bows and arrows, or spears, or swords, or clubs, or whatever. Before guns were invented, there were massacres aplenty. That wouldn't change if guns were suddenly banned.

Nevertheless, I expect more gun-banners will try to climb on this bandwagon over the next days and weeks. Recognize them for what they are: lying POS opportunists, who can't resist exploiting the blood shed by others to try to further their politically correct insanity. The truth is not in them. In fact, they wouldn't recognize the truth if they were shot with it!

Peter