先週、もし俺たちが米国にいたらもう命がなかったかもしれないぜと知人たちにちょうど話していたのだった*1。だから、ヴァージニア工科大学の事件は、日本の長崎の事件*2とともに驚いた。ある意味じゃ、他人事とは思えないというところもある。また、http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Talpidae/20070417/p1で挙げられているように、ガス・ヴァン・サント監督の『エレファント』を真っ先に思い出した。
![エレファント デラックス版 [DVD]](https://images-fe.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WK4BGFSDL._SL160_.jpg "エレファント デラックス版 [DVD]")
- 出版社/メーカー: ジェネオン エンタテインメント
- 発売日: 2004/12/03
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この事件を巡るあれこれについては勿論いいたいことはある。ただ、その余裕は今ない。興味深かったblog上のテクストとして、http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sean97/20070420/p1とhttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/antonian/20070419/1177001631を挙げるに留めておく。
以下は、http://eunheui.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2007/04/post_64d1.htmlで紹介されていたDaily Telegraphの記事。この記事の主人公は犯人でも被害者でもなく、犯人に拳銃を売った銃砲店の店主John Markell氏。事件への責任を問われて、責任はないと答える。また、”nobody is allowed to carry a gun on campus”が寧ろ問題だともいう；
このMarkell氏の発想は米国では決して孤立したものではないらしい。やはり「うに」さんが紹介されているカナダのCBCの記事*3では、欧州における米国の銃規制の甘さに問題ありという論調とそれとは正反対の米国人のリアクションが対比されている。ひとつ引用すると、
'If students were armed they could fight back'
By Tom Leonard in Roanoke
Last Updated: 2:23am BST 19/04/2007University killer held in mental health unit over suicide fears
What vexes John Markell most about the Virginia Tech massacre is not that he sold the killer one of his guns but that none of the victims was able to shoot back.
"I shoot with those people at the university - the professors, the deans, the grad students - and they shoot good," he said, fiddling with the same model handgun as that used in the killings.
The owner of Roanoke Firearms, a packed armoury of shotguns, assault rifles and handguns a half-hour drive from the university, said that his daughter graduated from Virginia Tech 10 years ago.
"What aggravates me is that my daughter is a heck of a shot and she has a concealed weapon permit but nobody is allowed to carry a gun on campus," he said.
Millions of Americans will accept his implication that the killings happened not because guns were too freely available but because they were not available enough.
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Mr Markell, 58, has a well-rehearsed answer to whether he feels any responsibility for the 33 deaths. He doesn't.
"We've been here eight years and sold 16,000 guns," he said. "Six have been used in the commission of a crime - four murders and two suicides.
"But they've been used hundreds of times to protect people. What happened here was an aberration. And I'm absolutely convinced that when he bought this gun, it was not on his mind to do what he did. You just don't wait five weeks."
Cho Seung-hui could have bought the 9mm Glock 19 just as easily from any gun store, said Mr Markell.
"I have no idea why he chose ours - we're not the closest. We get a fair amount of college students. There are quite a few who shoot competitively."
Mr Markell wasn't behind his reinforced glass counter when Cho came into the shed-like building on March 13.
It was the student's first and only visit and he was wholly unremarkable, said Mr Markell.
"The fellow who served him barely recognised his picture when he was showed it yesterday."
Cho paid $571 (£285) for the chunky black Glock - a police favourite and one of Mr Markell's biggest sellers - with a credit card in a 10-minute process Mr Markell describes tellingly as the "instant background check".
Cho produced a Virginian drivers' licence, his alien residency card and a cheque book printed with his address. The accompanying call to the state police to check his history can delay a sale for up to three days, said Mr Markell.
But while Cho's behaviour was so disturbing that both fellow students and Lucinda Roy, the university's former head of English, contacted police, evidently none of this was flagged up in the few minutes that an officer spent running his name through the police computer.
Unless he had committed a serious misdemeanour, the check wouldn't be held up by police, experts said yesterday.
The Roanoke gun store also included a rack of lethal-looking assault rifles. These couldn't have been bought by Cho as he wasn't a US citizen, Mr Markell said.
"We don't sell a gun to anybody," he insisted. "If they're acting odd, smelling of alcohol or if there's a communication breakdown, we don't sell it."
Mr Markell rejected suggestions that the gun laws should be tightened. "What gun law could you possibly pass that would stop what has happened?" he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/18/wcampus1718.xml
懲りない人たちだとは思う。
"The real problem is that none of these students of teachers had a personal weapon…they could have stopped this guy before 30 people were dead." —Rick Geiger; Rochester, New York
勿論、銃規制の問題は米国の内政問題であり、それをどうするかということは米国人に委ねられるべきだろう。また、マイケル・ムーアが『ボウリング・フォー・コロンバイン』
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- 出版社/メーカー: ジェネオン エンタテインメント
- 発売日: 2003/08/27
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