(Originally posted 2012-07-28 at Trojan Horse Productions. Note that this was after Aurora and prior to Sandy Hook. Reposted 2017-09-21.)
I don’t have the wherewithal to actually buy and read newspapers; at the convenience store, I merely read the headlines. I found this article by doing a news Google on “Crofton massacre” — which fact illustrates the point I’ll make below.
The English word “scandal” comes from the Greek skandalon, which literally means “stumbling block;” as in Matthew 18:6, where in the King James Version it is translated as “offense,” and Matthew 13:57, which would be translated literally, “They stumbled at him.”
We find that scandals make two different kinds of people “stumble” in two different ways.
First, there are the unstable individuals who, upon news of some scandalous event, may be tempted to engage in copycat behavior. The trial and retrial of two Baltimore teens on charges of having burned a dog alive in public (Google on “Travers Johnson Phoenix”) may have inspired subsequent incidents (Google “Baltimore cat burning,” and weep.).
Then there are the staunch and leal who over-react to the original event and become hysterical at any report of a subsequent, at all similar, event. We observe this in the NCAA’s recent sanctions against Penn State. We see it also in the national media coverage of this one arrest: it is getting just the same attention as if a “Crofton massacre” had actually occurred. We also see it in much of the current advocacy of even more stringent gun control laws; notwithstanding what I am about to say.
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Dylan Klebold, James Holmes and Jared Loughner — along with Neil Edwin Prescott — show that danger comes not from persons with a record of psychiatric problems, but rather from disturbed people who have never sought treatment (and thus have no such record).
I want to hear from gun rights advocates, how on earth anyone in her or his right mind would want to have NINE assault rifles. To me, that in itself indicates a whacko.
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