Already, the pro-gun and anti-gun forces have begun the food fight over which side is to blame for the Virginia Tech University shootings, and what changes in gun policy should be made to prevent future such incidents.
I’m on the pro-gun side, but that is irrelevant here.
Lost in all that hubbub is the identity of the suspect, and his motives. Drudge, via British SkyNews, reports that the shooter was an “Asian” in his mid-20s. “Asian” is British parlance for Middle Eastern, so I think dismissing radical Islamic terrorism is premature.
At the time of this writing, we still do not know the identity of the suspect, nor has there been a photo of him released publicly. Yet before any of that, everyone can start yelling at each other about guns.
What gives me grief is that, since this morning, the conservative and liberal blogospheres have done nothing but throw stones at each other about the tool the man used to commit the murders, (and in a few instances, shoot-em-up video games get all the blame from some conservatives and liberals), yet none of them seem to care who did it, what his personal identity was, what his racial identity and national origin is, and what his motivations were.
This is evidenced by the fact that when I opened my trusty Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, and told it to fetch new RSS feed items in my blogroll, I saw a whole lot of posts titled something along the lines of “gun free zones,” “assault weapons ban,” “magazine clips,” “conceal carry.” Nothing, save this medium, the Council of Conservative Citizens national website, V-Dare, and eventually American Renaissance when new news items are posted later this afternoon, had titles along the lines of “race,” “Asian,” “non-white,” “terrorism,” “Middle Eastern,” “radical Islam.”
Race comes first. Everything else is ultimately negotiable.
