Father of Virginia Tech victim speaks -- is anyone listening?

I found this commentary on the website of "The Gun Guys." Now, before you gunnuts out there attack me as wanting to confiscate your guns, stop. Don't even think about it. The Prophet owns guns and hunts. The Prophet served almost 30 years in the Army, including a tour as a grunt in Vietnam. I know guns. And I want them controlled.

Now, here's the article I copied from "The Gun Guys:"

-- quote --

http://www.gunguys.com/#post-2763


We came across this extraordinary op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by Michael Bishop, whose son Jamie was murdered during the VA Tech massacre.

It's worth quoting at length.

At 9:40 a.m. on Monday, April 16, 2007, my wife's cousin, Lee Ellis, telephoned. Check the news, he advised. Something was happening at Virginia Tech, where our adult son, Jamie, taught. There were two dormitory murders and bloodshed in an engineering building.

"Jamie has his own house," I said. "He teaches German, not engineering." I could not imagine that at an institution as big as Virginia Tech, our son could fall victim to such peril. I dismissed Lee's warning as alarmist.

Later, though, I knelt in our kitchen to pray. Later, I called my wife, Jeri, at work to say that things looked bad. She drove home screaming. Together, we failed to reach our daughter-in-law, a tenure-track German teacher, by telephone.

Near 6 p.m., cruising up I-85, we learned that, in the gunman's assault, Jamie had died. His wife, kept in the dark all day, spoke by phone, crying, "I'm so sorry you've lost your son." My breath left me, and I let Jeri drive to our daughter's home in Bogart.

Although the majority of gun violence victims are not killed in rampage murders such as Virginia Tech, the horrific tragedy of losing a loved one is all too common in America. Mr. Bishop continues:

Ten days later, back in Pine Mountain, I stopped behind a pickup bearing the sticker "Gun Control: Simple Solutions for Simple Minds."

I served in the military, and my father hunted. I do not wish to confiscate any decent citizen's gun. But soon Georgia lawmakers will debate two bills that, if passed, would steeply undermine public safety.

House Bill 89 would let workers tote guns to corporate parking lots in their vehicles. HB 915, the "Second Amendment Protection Act," would authorize guns at volatile venues like ballgames, political rallies, bars, and postsecondary schools. (I would not teach at such a school.)
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dubiously misinterpreted and idolized, does not prohibit states from restricting firearms subject to criminal misuse or from denying guns to persons unfit to possess them.........

Georgia takes no real action to protect us and places us at risk for events as calamitous as Seung-Hui Cho's Virginia Tech rampage. Like Virginia, Georgia has no statute for background checks at gun shows, no assault-weapon limitations, no waiting period, no requirement for child safety locks, no call for a license/permit to buy guns, and seemingly little patience for any rule that would truly enforce accountability............

But in Georgia, gun-lobby groups back the Second Amendment Protection Act that denies the latent murderousness of any firearm by implying that everyone should carry, even workers and students. (A pro-gun student group proposed wearing holsters to class to signal their desire to carry on campus.)

Such thinking presages an obligation, not just a right, to bear arms.

Yes, Virginia Tech involves other issues: mental illness, privacy, campus security. But it centers around lax gun laws. As Lu Ann McNabb, friend of slain student Reema Samaha, said last week in Virginia, "Without a Glock, a Walther, and high-capacity magazines," Cho could never have done such damage.

Some say, "More guns make us safer. An armed society is a polite society." Yeah, right. Think Deadwood. Think Iraq. Ask why no one believes nuclear proliferation makes us safer.
Georgia needs no "Second Amendment Protection Act." Georgia needs laws that sensibly protect us. So does every state in this nation.

In the mortuary, I kissed our son's forehead. Even through his clothes, I felt his strange iciness.

"His hands are so cold," I said.

"Yes," his widow said. "But if you rub them, they warm up."

I've warmed up. Have the people of Georgia? It's past time to voice our disgust with wrongheaded extremists.

We honor Michael Bishop's courage in standing up for the memory of his son by opposing the gun lobby's ridiculous and extremist agenda in Georgia. His pain and loss is simply unfathomable, to lose his son in such a sudden and horrific manner.

If only the pro-gunners who send hateful emails to us at GunGuys.com read Mr. Bishop's column, they might at least think twice before ridiculing the families who've lost loved ones to gun violence. But since gun zealots demonstrate zero empathy beyond their own selfish and radical ideology, it's doubtful the words of a father who buried his son would register to gun proponents at all.

Survivors such as Michael Bishop, and the millions of Americans who have been affected by gun violence, deserve a better, safer, and just response to their loss and suffering. And instead of correcting and strengthening our efforts to reduce gun violence, Georgia and several other states are moving in a wrong, and deadly, direction.

As we said days after the massacre at Virginia Tech, "It's time to re-think guns in America."

-- end quote --

Thoughts at the start of 2008

The Prophet has been busy and has not posted for over six months. In early 2005 The Prophet and Sweet Thing moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast where we were building our dream retirement home -- all of which ended when Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything we owned. We fled back to The Prophet's home and soon afterward his father died, his mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she died, and now The Prophet and Sweet Thing have moved to Eastern Virgina where we plan to start building a house in March 2008 or so.

At the beginning of 2008 The Prophet has a lot to say but it will have to wait for another day because now The Prophet is off to watch LSU stomp Ohio State -- again.