Old School Shootings prove the utility of modern assault weapons

The battle of words rages:  "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!"  vs.  "Ban guns!"

Well, I thought that perhaps a bit of historical perspective would shed a bit of light on the subject.  Of course, who did I turn to for that historical perspective?

Chris Rodda, of course!  Her work on debunking the christian lies and hypocrisy of David Barton is legendary, so I thought that her post on this at FreeThought Blogs might be informative.

Boy, was I right!  (I love it when I'm right...)

In her post entitled, "No, Mr. Huckabee, It’s Not Because God Has Been Removed From Schools", she provides an interesting perspective on his remarks.  But, more importantly, she also provides a detailed list of past school shootings - going back to 1840!

The list ends in 1962, when Huckabee says we kicked god out of our schools.  Not only does this list prove Huckabee wrong, but it conveniently shows something else - that when firearms had slower rates of fire, held fewer rounds and were harder and slower to reload, the casualties of these attacks were considerably lower than after more rapidly firing and reloading weapons began to hit the markets.

This is critical to the current conversation, when we need to limit the damage that can be done by limiting the ability of shooters to be able to kill rapidly by denying them the rapid firing military style weapons.

Go read it, and prepare yourself to be amazed at the differences between the shootings now and then - and the similarities.

A sampling.

First on the list:

November 12, 1840: Charlottesville, Virginia. University of Virginia student Joseph Green Semmes shot law professor John A.G. Davis when Davis attempted to unmask Semmes and another student, both of whom were wearing masks and carrying pistols. Professor Davis died three days later.

Last on the list:

October 17, 1961: Denver, Colorado. Tennyson Beard, 14, got into an argument with William Hachmeister, 15, at Morey Junior High School. During the argument Beard pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and shot at Hachmeister, wounding him. A stray bullet also struck Deborah Faith Humphrey, 14, who died from her gunshot wound.

Obviously, learning about god in school didn't stop the killings, nor did god take a hand in preventing tragedy.  Even where he was very welcome.