From yesterday’s White House press conference:

Q Columbine, Amish school shooting, now this, and a whole host of other gun issues brought into schools — that’s not including guns on the streets and in many urban areas and rural areas. Does there need to be some more restrictions? Does there need to be gun control in this country?

“Do we need gun control in this country,” asked as though we don’t already have restrictive gun control laws.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last time I bought a gun I could almost feel the ATF breathing down my neck.

I hate it when we go through this “We need gun control!” baloney every time there’s another high-profile shooting.  As though the gun, and not the whacked-out lunatic wielding it, were the problem.  The New York Times is already all over running the predictable “GUN CONTROL NOW!” op/ed:

Yesterday’s mass shooting at Virginia Tech — the worst in American history — is another horrifying reminder that some of the gravest dangers Americans face come from killers at home armed with guns that are frighteningly easy to obtain…

...Our hearts and the hearts of all Americans go out to the victims and their families. Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough. What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.

An interesting note: Late last year the Brady gun control campaign released a ranking of the various states based on how stringent their gun control laws were.  It turned out, rather embarrassingly for the Brady people and gun-grabbing pointy heads in general, that the states with the highest amount of gun control also saw the most increase in violent crime.

As I pointed out yesterday, if we encouraged private gun ownership in our society more these shootings would be a lot less tragic.