"Someone should be held accountable"

My obsession with The West Wing continues as I start season four. In the last episode of season three, CJ's love interest (the super hot Mark Harmon) was shot and killed in a robbery. It was so upsetting, I actually yelled at the TV "why can't they leave these people alone!" It seems like people are always getting killed on that show. Now I know why. People are always getting killed in real life.

The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.

"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."

Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."

How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.

You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.

We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.

Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.

CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”