On gun control, how times have changed.

Not so long ago, the lament was: Why’s it take a campus massacre like Columbine to get any action on gun control? Today, the lament is just the opposite: Why, even after a campus massacre like Virginia Tech, is there no action on gun control?

This is not exactly a rerun of Profiles in Courage. In the wake of the mass murder at Virginia Tech, not one Democratic presidential candidate has talked about gun control. Not one. Nor have but a handful of Democrats in Congress. Read more...

So far, the political class has reacted with caution to the massacre in Blacksburg.  Given the circumstances, that is understandable. While we have seen this kind of story before, the ferocity of the killing is breathtaking.

I was struck by the response by many of the students who were interviewed on television after the shootings. They were all composed, with their emotions held in check. The killings didn’t seem to shock them. As if after 9/11, they had lost their capacity to be shocked.

Has our society lost its capacity to be shocked by these kinds of massacres? Read more...

My question is not why former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would get $200 haircuts, but why his staff would let him. I know how superficial this sounds, but after all that Bill Clinton went through with his own $200 haircut (far worse because that was in 1993 dollars!), is it something the Edwards camp wants to risk changing the subject to? Now we know celebrity stylist Joseph Torrenueva of Beverly Hills, Calif., flies to Edwards's side to cut his hair. How's that going to play in Peoria?

Candidates should be real people, and the fact is that some real people spend a lot at the beauty parlor. But wouldn't it be better for Edwards's reputation if he spent that much on a bottle of wine? It's not so much that people don't want their presidents to be rich but that they want to think if they give someone the job, he won't ever have cared that deeply about his hair, especially when some women voting for him care not a whit about their hair. I know some of these women, but won't list names here ...
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All across America today, while we mourn together the tragic loss in Virginia, nuts are buying guns, candidates are bragging they kill bunnies with semiautomatic weapons, and politicians tremble with fear of gun lobbies.

And more young Americans die.

We don’t need another debate about the talking points for and against gun control. We need a serious national discussion to find a way to protect legitimate hunters while preventing any nut case, psychotic and sicko from getting a gun to kill more children.

Virtually every day in Iraq, there are tragedies and outrages equal to Virginia Tech. Read more...

Americans are besieged by crises and upheavals these days.

From Don Imus to the acquittal of the Duke lacrosse players to the terrorist attacks at Virginia Tech, we’ve been bombarded and now our emotions and anger are on overdrive. Every week there's a new headline putting into perspective the emotional rollercoaster we faced just the week before. Are the times we live in today more prone to violence, mass murder, destruction, and injustice because of the Information Age?

One has to admit that the Imus affair and the tragedy at Virginia Tech, which has brought us all to tears and sorrow, have gotten incredible and justifiable coverage by the global media. However, there is one tragic situation over the last couple of weeks that has not garnered the deserved coverage despite our residence in this supposed Age of Information: the Duke rape case and prosecutor Mike Nifong. Read more...

As America comes to grips with the deadliest shooting in its history, this should be a time for grief, sorrow and reflection. This should not be a time for politics, but sadly, that seems to be where certain members of Congress and other advocacy groups seem to be headed.

According to today’s Opinion Journal’s Political Diary, Paul Helmke, former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., and current president of the Brady Campaign, immediately issued a statement calling for more gun control measures to be put on the books. While his sense of timing is a bit grotesque, Mr. Helmke should know that lawmakers can’t legislate sanity; a deranged individual who apparently obtained his firearms legally and senselessly killed his classmates can’t be stopped by more gun control laws. Read more...

If no one had a gun, no one would get shot. But if a few students had had guns at Virginia Tech on Monday, the man who killed 32 people there would probably have been stopped sooner. He would not have had the luxury of time to reload between bouts of execution-style murder of the innocent. What does the massacre suggest about the need for gun control? Scroll down and answer our Quick Poll! question: "Do the murders at Virginia Tech make the case for more or less gun control?"

Yesterday the ghost of Sen. John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign stopped by for a visit at the 2008 candidate's speech to the Memphis Economic Club. He sounded the theme of reform that brought McCain national prominence, as he criticized the Republicans who ran the Congress for spending too much and took a slap at the administration for failing  the victims of Hurricane Katrina. "My goodness, when disaster strikes, the government isn't even ready to deliver drinking water to dehydrated babies or rescue the aged and infirm trapped in a hospital wth no electricity," he said. Read more...

Whatever we do, let’s not panic over the mass murder at Virginia Tech.

Don’t let anybody suggest, for example, that such a heinous act has anything to do with how easy it is to get your hands on a gun in Virginia.

After all, we know that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. We also know that gun control only makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns; it does nothing to keep them out of the hands of criminals. Read more...