Two children and one adult were killed Friday in a stabbing attack at a nursery school in Belgium, officials said.Violence in Belgium? That's strange--they have such "strong gun laws."
Ten children and two adults were being treated in the hospital after the attack, the Interior Ministry said. It was unclear whether all of them suffered stab wounds. [More]
Friday, January 23, 2009
Children dead in Belgian nursery knife attack
Stumble it!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
31 comments:
Apparently some forms of violence are more equal than others. With apologies to George Orwell, of course.
You should be ashamed, using this for your own goal... know this: when we had the same gunlaws as in the USA, this guy would have had a gun and many more children would have died...
If you're waiting for me to become ashamed of excoriating mandated defenselessness, you're in for a long wait, Mr. Bravely Anonymous.
don't be ashamed, it's your right to exploit this drama to further your goals.
Way to go, you should be very proud of yourself...
You use it to gloat about. Sick and poor. And in this case, it doiesn't even make sense.
Because... this would neeeever have happened if that guy had had a gun instead of a knife. U-hu. What does this have to do with the weapon laws of any country at all???
PS: Don't bring up the defenselessness. Or are you trying to tell us US nurseries are armed in case of an attack?
I acknowledge that Belgium's laws are Belgium's business--I am simply pointing out that by mandating defenselessness, the government ensures that there will be no effective resistance to evil scum like the murderer in Belgium.
Could it have happened here? Yes, easily, which is why I am pointing out the lethal consequences of victim disarmament zones, which are also plentiful in this country, and which I also condemn.
2 years ago a crazy man bought a gun in Antwerp and shot several people at random, replaying the game "Grand Theft Auto". Since then Belgian gun-laws have been even more restricted. Fortunately I might add, because if this disturbed man would have had a gun it most likely would have been a lot worse.
Are you suggesting that it would have been better if all nurses in daycare centres carried guns? Or if they kept them somewhere in a cupboard where curious toddlers could find them?
I am sorry to say that there is just evil in this world that we cannot prepare for nor defend ourselves for.
I respect your right for freedom of speech but I'm saddened that you would use such a horrible tragedy as a vehicle for this cause.
sincerely,
I am sorry to say that there is just evil in this world that we cannot prepare for nor defend ourselves for.
We certainly cannot effectively defend ourselves if we are disarmed by government edict.
My treatment of this atrocity is insensitive, and I am sorry for that, but I am not going to remain silent about mandated defenselessness.
There comes a time when silence is betrayal Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
I don't know what anon is thinking, but yeah, if my child was in that nursery I would be very happy to know that there was someone there who could and would defend her with arms.
That he doesn't love his children as much is not my problem, but it sure might be his children's.
Insensitive, huh uh! Not even a little bit. What I find insensitive are statements like this "I am sorry to say that there is just evil in this world that we cannot prepare for nor defend ourselves for."- anon.
Translation when taken with the entirety of his comments is "so we should willingly sacrifice the weakest and most defenseless among us, so that in a game of odds, reduced to strictly numbers of chance I myself might become a victim are lessened as I can run away from an attack that doesn't travel in excess of 2000fps. To hell with the kids and the old, and the halt and lame."
Now, that is real insensitivity. Guaranteeing more helpless victims for monsters in the interest of personal emotional comfort.
Please stay anonymous, I don't care to know you.
Anon,
You stated :
"I am sorry to say that there is just evil in this world that we cannot prepare for nor defend ourselves for."
In a word HORSECRAP. We CAN prepare ourselves to face evil, and in fact we OUGHT to prepaer ourselves to face evil. We may not always succeed in defeating evil, that does not mean that we should not try.
Why do you feel that it is better to pay another person to oppose evil when you are not willing to?
Oh, and when exactly were Belgian citizens guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms? I seem to have missed that in my studies of European history.
So you Americans are "safer" because of your guns... in which country are the most innocent gunshot victims ? All the high-school shootings ? The most dangerous cities ? Highest criminal activity rates ? Well, let me tell you: not in our Europe, thank u very much. So you keep on killin' each other to feel "safer", we'll stick to our way of life... every year we can see the stats of how many people died because of fire-arms. (approx. 40 times more people killed by guns in the USA as in any other industrialized country - Among 26 industrialized nations, 86% of gun deaths among children under the age of 15 occurred in the United States - you must be so proud)
please have some respect for the victims and their family & friends of the nursery killing and don't use this event for your propaganda, give these people the peace they diserve..
greetings
Stephanie from Belgium
bregt, to answer your question. [The most dangerous cities ? Highest criminal activity rates ?]
The UK, look it up. The EU and the UN both have documented it.
Secondly, you use a false premise in your assertion that we are a more dangerous society because we have more gun deaths than do you.
That is very much like saying men are more health conscious and take better care of themselves because they have less ovarian cancer than women.
Did you think we wouldn't notice your oxymoronic premise?
How much violent crime do you have, regardless of the instrument used to facilitate it? Those are the comparisons a thinking man would have made, not the hysterical and emotional "gun" mantra. Also bear in mind that in "your" Europe a great deal of crime is not reported as crime, lest it offend some of your more violent minorities, among other reasons.
Are those children in Belgium any less dead because they weren't shot?
Would they have had a better chance of less or no harm had someone on site been able to offer effective resistance?
Let me ask you if you are proud of yourselves, being not able to nor inclined to protect and defend your own children. The inability to do so is the result of failed political philosophy, but you are adults, grow up and change it. That is if you ever develop the inclination to protect your children's lives.
Till that time I will regard your screechings as to our violent nature as the mewlings of a mouse in the company of terriers. I cannot respect anyone who places little or no value on his children.
Quote Straightarrow: "Let me ask you if you are proud of yourselves, being not able to nor inclined to protect and defend your own children."
Uhu, and you Americans with all your guns, are of course THE childprotectors: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting which contains a long list of students being shot in American schools, all those young lives you "failed" to protect while most of em died because the killers could easily get their hands on guns. Where were your "childprotecting gunmen" ??
What would have been different if we had different gun laws, on line with your view?
Be hinest, nine of the nurses would have had a gun at hand. Not a single child could have been defended. The murderer would not have had a fake gun and a knife, but a real gun. More dead children.
The conclusions you draw from this incident make no sense.
...that would have been none of the nurses, not nine of them. Curse you, cast.
"Where were your "childprotecting gunmen" ??"
They weren't there because being law-abiding gun owners, they didn't carry in "gun free zones."
Also, you might want to take a look at the UK. It's not quite the non-violent, gun-free utopia you'd imagine.
Anon said: "Quote Straightarrow: "Let me ask you if you are proud of yourselves, being not able to nor inclined to protect and defend your own children."
Uhu, and you Americans with all your guns, are of course THE childprotectors: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting which contains a long list of students being shot in American schools, all those young lives you "failed" to protect while most of em died because the killers could easily get their hands on guns. Where were your "childprotecting gunmen" ??"
************
Thank you very much for making exactly my point and refuting your own emotional and illogical fears as to the efficacy of gun control.
As you noted we have had school shootings here where far too many innocent lives were lost. Every case where the death toll was high enough to call the attack a successful mass murder, whether in our schools or shopping malls the kill zone was a "gun free zone". Therein lies the contradiction, they weren't gun free, at all, it is just that it was a violation of law for decent people to have a gun there and the indecent didn't care about the law. They had guns. Much like your vaunted Europe in its almost entirety.
If you really want to talk about our school shootings as proof of your viewpoint, explain the Appalachian School of Law shooting outcome, or the Pearl, Mississippi High school shooting outcome.
Both cases where armed men with guns did protect those innocent lives and stopped the murderers well before their planned finale. Incidentally, both those venues were also gun free zones, known as kill boxes, to criminals. In the Appalachian case, two students went to their cars and retreived their handguns and disarmed and detained the shooter. In the Pearl case the Principal had to leave the school grounds to retrieve his handgun from his car, because to have parked it on school grounds with the pistol in it, or to have carried it on his person would have been a violation of the law. Technically, his retrieval of the weapon and the carrying of it back to the campus where he stopped the shooter and detained him for the police was a chargeable offense under the law. Only political pressure from a grateful community kept our own weasel of a prosecutor from pressing charges against him.
You ask where our "child protecting gunmen" were in the other cases where no protection was afforded. They were obeying the law. The laws we are desperately trying to eradicate as just too damn fatal to innocent people. The same type of laws you are promoting. The ones who encourage monsters by providing a steady supply of helpless victims.
So you see, we do have the inclination to protect our children,and we have tried very hard to change laws that make it unlikely or even impossible, we have tried to do this through the political and legal system. Many of us are now out of patience and disregard law that devalues human life to the point of insignificance. What you don't understand, and I suspect you never will is that free men are not subject to that level of control by government.
I don't care how European you are, helplessness is not a security measure. Don't believe everything the French tell you.
Despite your long explaination Straightarrow, your whole way of thinking is wrong... when everybody has the "right" to buy and carry arms, that means that people with killing intentions are the first who will make use of this right, like the high-school shooters. What kind of solution is "but if other people also carry guns, they can shoot the killers"
Anyway you turn it: bring more guns in society, and more people will die. You give the example of those two shootings which were stopped because the shooters were shot, thanks to your gun laws... well, the list of gun shootings which would never happened if you had a severe gun law so that people couldn't get to guns so easily, would be much more longer...
Crazy American's who think guns are the solution... not really consistent. But okay if you guys think so I'm not the person to judge, if you are in favor of guns it's your choice but respect also the opinion of us who are against it.
Well I'm certainly glad you Europeans have approved the murder of these poor people. How thoughtful of them to die in an acceptable manner. Don't you know their families are filled with joy that none of them could shoot the bastard that killed them and that no one nearby could either.
Personally, I can't imagine why you think helpless death to be a moral victory, but at least y'all seem to be happy with it.
Wow, can you still breathe on top of Mount Moral Superiority or is the air too thin up there? Would explain a lot.
Who brought those dead children up again to gloat about European weapon laws?
Not that it makes sense. Despite all you added, it still reads as if you'd assumed the guy had had a gun, and the victims hadn't, instead of getting your info straight or do some logical thinking you digged your whole from there and refuse to come out of it.
Because seriously, last time I was in the States, nurseries weren't armed, and not only because the law stood in the way. Last time I checked, toddlers couldn't defend themselves in any case and kindergarten teachers saw it as a risk to bring a weapon into a kindergarten. Last time I checked, amok runs started by people who had free access to guns resulted in far more deaths. Your resolution? Give *everybody* a gun and see who's the better shooter, and comes out alive?! And everybody who doesn't see it that way just doesn't love their children enough to defend them and is okay with babies dying! A-ha... To turn this all around on the victim's environment, their relatives and their community, and because it's so conveniently fitting your world view, the entire continent, and go ny-aaa, ny-aah at it all, you have to pretty faaaar out, sorry but there's no other way to put it.
Do you guys really think there would be lesser victims if there were guns? Maybe the guy would be death now, but he probably also would have had a gun so he could kill more people. Even if there were guns in the nursery,they wouldn't have been prepared for it and it would have been a lot worse. So cut the crap about guns being the solution. It's a miracle you haven't used "gun" and "peace" in one sentence yet. Leave it alone, it's bad enough it happened don't you say it's our own fault!!
Well, since you brought it up, I am your moral superior. I believe in defending and preserving life. You do not.
In order to make fun of my position you must first mistate it, which you did.
Who arrested this guy? How many police did he knife? Why so few? When you answer those questions you may discover how asinine your position is.
Please don't say you don't believe in violence, because if you do, I will prove you a liar and a coward. Been to that war too many times, not to know what makes that particular hairpin twisty.
Oh, and we are trying to cure our people like you, so that our own people who hold your view will join the community of protective man. Beats the Hell out of hysterical helplessness.
You are correct when you point out that we have people and places here that mirror your situation. And those are exactly the places madmen, murderers, rapists, and robbers gravitate to and ply their trade. We are trying to eliminate that. Not tolerate it, as you erroneously claim is the sane thing to do.
"Who arrested this guy? How many police did he knife? Why so few?"
Answer: no policemen were knifed. They threw him of his bike without using any guns... what's your point ?
That they had guns, and he knew it, and therefore did not try to pull his shit on them.
How could you miss that lesson?
No problem with the police having guns, but not every citizen. Clear ?
What is clear is that you are too cowardly to accept your responsibility to yourself and your family and your community. You will hire violence done in your name in the vain hope that you will be protected without the risk of being a responsible free citizen.
You aren't just a physical coward, but a moral coward also. Nothing illustrates the efficacy of peaceful citizens being armed more than the difference in behavior by this baby-killing monster from the nursery to his later arrest. You pretend not to understand the role played by the ability of his captors to bring violence upon him. Thusly, he surrenders without trying to stab a damned one of the cops. Your refusal to admit the value of being able to bring violence upon marauders is not indicative of intellectual failings, just moral and physical failure.
Understand?
"Despite your long explaination Straightarrow, your whole way of thinking is wrong... when everybody has the "right" to buy and carry arms, that means that people with killing intentions are the first who will make use of this right, like the high-school shooters."
Criminals will get guns whether it's legal or not. They're criminals, by definition they have no problem with breaking the law. It's only law-abiding citizens who abide by gun laws.
Post a Comment