File Under: Smoked Too Many Doobies in the 60s

Many moons ago, when I mentioned to my seester (not The Clam, the other one) that I was going to rent "The Wall" (the Pink Floyd movie), she told me that, unless I was planning on getting stoned first, the movie wouldn't make sense to me. I scoffed at her, but at the same time never rented the movie. Well, now I understand what she was saying. There are things which (apparently) make perfect sense when you're stoned out of your gourd that are beyond those of us in the sober world...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/commentary.plate/index.html

Plate: Let's lay down our right to bear arms

This was the part that really got me:

"Let me explain. Some misguided people will focus on the fact that the 23-year-old student who killed his classmates and others at Virginia Tech was ethnically Korean. This is one of those observations that's 99.99 percent irrelevant. What are we to make of the fact that he is Korean? Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun, it looks like he may have just put together a peace formula for civil war-wracked Sudan -- a formula that escaped his predecessor.

"So let's just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun."

I'm sorry - I know I haven't been following the story 24/7 like a good little girl, but who exactly is focusing on the fact that the shooter is Korean? (Except for Koreans themselves, who are apparently mortified that one of their number could do such a thing. I simply found it hugely ironic that, much like SAT scores, Asians even out-performed your average white guy in this horror. Bell Curve, indeed.)

OK. That was tasteless.

But back to my point. What in the hell is this guy talking about? Does anyone have a clue? And does the fact that the new SG of the UN is Korean, and ostensibly a nice person, somehow exempt all Koreans from committing crimes?

I'm not trying to get in the middle of the whole gun control argument. I think it's tacky to discuss this this early - kind of like the people who asked, when I told them my aunt had lung cancer, "Does she smoke?!"

As far as the issue goes, I know where I stand and why, and I'm so over having this debate, because nobody has the slightest intention of even listening to the opposition with an open mind any more. So why should I waste my breath trying to make my point?

Besides which, 2 guns did not wake up one fine morning and decide that they wanted to take down some college kids. That's absurd. And the kids weren't killed by a Korean. They were killed by a mentally disturbed person. That he was born in Korea is beside the point. That Ban-ki-Moon is Korean is beside the point. That he may have come up with a peace plan for Sudan is beside the point (and I'll believe that when I see it).

The guy was sick in the head. He killed them. That's the point. Period.