Conservative Logic

You've been hearing from a bunch of conservatives (including some I respect as well as some I don't) that the tragedy at Virginia Tech could have been prevented or at least largely curtailed if the campus had not been considered a weapons-free zone. If more students and more faculty members had been armed, the argument goes, the tragedy would not have happened. More guns means less crime: "It's proven over and over again," the oleaginous Tom DeLay said on Charlie Rose last night.

Oh, really?

Let's examine the logic of this, shall we?

• Would students drink less if they all had a bottle of whiskey in their dorm rooms?
• Would student have less sex if they all had a box of condoms in their dorm rooms?

So, according to this conservative logic, students shouldn't have condoms because they'll use them but they should have guns because they won't use them.

When I think of these arguments my mind goes back to a scene in Howard Hawks' great 1940 comedy "His Girl Friday." In the scene I'm thinking of, Hildy Johnson is interviewing Earl Williams, a man convicted of murdering a police officer, in his jail cell. They get to talking about the theory of "production for use" and how "everything should be made use of." At one point Johnson asks Williams, "What's a gun for, Earl?"

"Why, to shoot, of course," Williams answers, as if it's just dawning on him.

It's a shame that some conservatives aren't as bright as Earl Williams, and can't seem to grasp that, in a community of several thousand young people going through a very difficult, emotional and stressful time of their lives, having them armed to the teeth might not be the brightest idea in the world.

What's a gun for?

Tom Moran