> What do you think about our fearless leaders call for more gun
> control?

Should we be surprised to find them cynical opportunists, willing and eager to capitalize on the happy happenstance of some fresh teen-age bodies to expand state power before the corpses are even in the ground?

What I want to know is why there aren't more loud, public voices asking

1) what it is about the GOVERNMENT schools that cause this (we don't see such reactions to incarceration in parochial or private schools, nor from home-schoolers -- perhaps precisely BECAUSE attendance theere isn't mandatory, because gangs bullying the skinnier kids are less prevalent, and because Ritalin and Prozac are not handed out like candy; and

2) Why no one points out the extent to which this is a media-generated furor. Of course it should be covered, and not ignored. But when have our breathless TV hucksters reported to us that homicides in schools are actually DOWN -- progressively and consistently -- in recent years? And far more than 15 teen-agers are killed in drive-by gang warfare every month or two in Harlem, Detroit, Philadelphia, and East L.A. ... not even out of specific grudges, but often just so a youth can "make his bones" and gain full membership in his gang. Yet that's not "news" because they happen one or two at a time ... and because the victims are almost always black or brown.

Yet CNN anxiously asks "have you traced who originally sold those shotguns?" as though that can provide some answer as to how our young men have been rendered this disconnected and desperate. What next? Shall we trace who originally sold the propane that was in their propane bomb in the cafeteria kitchen? Launch federal registration of propane bottles?

This demonstrates an intellect operating at about the same level as those who figured that since the cat was the witch's pet, we might as well burn all the cats, too ... just to be on the safe side.

-- V.S.

Vin Suprynowicz, [email protected]

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