The Myth of Personal Protection, Times Twelve

So far, 12 dead at the Army's Fort Hood in Texas:

Fort Hood, the country's largest Army post, was the scene of a tragedy on Thursday, a mass shooting. Details are still a little fuzzy as reports come in, but the Army says 12 people have been killed and another 31 were wounded...

At a press conference, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone told reporters that the shooter was among those killed in the incident as authorities responded to the violence, but did not specify if the shooter is counted among the 12 reported dead. Cone said two more soldiers had also been apprehended as suspects in the shooting, but he provided no new details about the circumstances surrounding those suspects. He did say that the shooter used two weapons, both handguns.

Here was a place where nearly every last person had a gun or carried a gun, in a state that never saw a weapon regulation that it could stomach, a state, in fact, that wanted to let teachers carry loaded guns to school, for Christ's sake. This is how they look at it in Texas:

According to Barbara Williams with the Texas Association of School Boards, Harrold remains the only Texas school district with a guns-on-campus policy...

“This is Texas. I have a magnet on my refrigerator of the state with a plastic gun glued to it that says, ‘We don’t call 9-1-1.’ We find that funny in Texas,” she said.

Really? Well, you must be pissing yourself with laughter now, Babs.

Even in a place like Fort Hood, where people are trained to handle weapons as professionals, even there, their guns could not keep them safe. How long do we have to listen to the weapons industry propagandize their profits through the mouths of puppets like Williams? How long before the lies and myths become so glaring that even the ventriloquists' dummies choke on the talking points? Guns, and the sense of omnipotence and invulnerability they confer, create criminals. Carrying one doesn't keep you safe; it makes it all the more likely you will die, no matter who you are.

Update: How many times can you use the word Palestinian in a sentence? BTW, where was the concern about Catholics when Tim McVeigh blew away all those innocents in 1995? I can't remember any priests rushing to assure people that, despite centuries of murder and terrorism, 99% of Catholics are good, law-abiding people.