Tuesday, October 23, 2007



Pennsylvania home invader fatally shot: "A man in a East Liberty apartment fatally shot one of two men who broke into the home early this morning, Pittsburgh police said. The two invaders, one of whom had a gun, entered the apartment at 300 North Negley Avenue about 3:15 a.m., Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki said. A man in the apartment grabbed a shotgun and shot one of the intruders in the side of the head, Stangrecki said. The man died at the scene, Stangrecki said. The other intruder ran away and was still being sought. Police did not identify anyone involved and no charges were filed this morning".


Michigan: Armed robbery attempt at jewelry store: "Police in Grand Rapids need your help to find a man who tried to rob a jewelry store at gun-point in Grand Rapids Monday night. The call came into Grand Rapids Police at 6:28p.m. of a man attempting to rob Trajan Jewelry located at 2407 Eastern Ave SE. Police say the owner fired a warning shot at the would-be robber to scare him off causing the man to leave without incident. The man is described as a black male in his 40's. He was wearing a black shirt with a white hat and was carrying what looked like a cane or a stick. The man had a silver hand gun".


Utopianism behind gun bans: "For whatever might be the marginal benefits of banning guns-and reasonable people may differ on this question-it is hard not to connect the urge to do so with a utopian belief in social engineering by legislation. The point of such engineering is always to create one of Eliot's "systems so perfect that no one will need to be good." Or, we might add, heroic. If merely preventing gun violence were the aim, a much surer course would be to arm all students with handguns since, at the very least, you could be sure that no killer would claim more than one or two victims before being killed himself. But there is something un-utopian about fighting the evil that the utopian stubbornly insists should not exist in the first place. Better to pass a resolution anathematizing it. This worldview clings to its implicit belief in the power of the specter of law and order's rising from the gravy and the mashed potatoes. The passionate advocacy by some of a gun ban as a solution to the problem of school shootings, a solution whose efficacy had just been disproved by this same school shooting, showed a need on their part to believe in the power of politics and law to solve even the most intractable and dangerous problems."

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