Bill Steigerwald, associate editor, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, puts the horrible Virginia Tech shooting in its almost-forgotten historical context.
On March 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe, board member of Bath Consolidated Schools, Bath Township, Michigan, carried out a massacre that killed 45, including 38 grade-school children. Though, unlike Cho Seung-Hui, Kehoe used readily available explosives. Yet, it appears that no one called for bans of explosives as Kehoe was recognized as an aberrant and abhorrent madman.
Crazed murders will always be with us, regardless of any imagined government-run police system. Removing the right to bear arms in order to protect against the next lunatic serves no personal security purpose — as Kehoe aptly proves. Yet, removing the right to bear arms does serve to further metastasize governmental power — as was well understood by our Founding Fathers.
