Saturday, August 08, 2009

I'm sure that's be a surprise to the designers...

...or, Eric Thompson needs to have what, again?...

MADISON, Wis. — An online weapons dealer who sold a gun or accessories to three mass killers, including a man who opened fire at a Pittsburgh-area health club this week, said Friday that any of the shooters could have just as easily found what they wanted at a Wal-Mart or another store.
Eric Thompson, whose company TGSCOM Inc. last year sold an empty Glock 9 mm magazine and magazine loading apparatus to George Sodini, the man who shot up a Collier Township, Pa., health club on Tuesday, said the sale was legal and his company did nothing wrong.
...
Seung-Hui Cho used a .22-caliber handgun bought from TGSCOM in his attack at Virginia Tech in April 2007, in which 32 people were killed. Stephen Kazmierczak, who killed five people in an NIU classroom before killing himself in February 2008, bought two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster through a TGSCOM site.
...
Andrew Goddard, whose son Colin was shot and wounded at Virginia Tech, said Thompson "needs to have some sort of social responsibility."
"I take issue on the basic principle that he's selling something that doesn't have a legitimate use outside of stalking and killing people," Goddard, of Richmond, Va., said.
Wow. What the hell does one say to that? Well, beyond "what a load of emotionally-based fact-free crap," that is. I do wonder, though, what he thinks of the institution of police forces, considering they all carry the very same things the mass shooters did. If we're going to take Mr. Goddard's line of thinking to its logical conclusion, we might as well say that when it's all said and done the police are only good for stalking and killing people. Of course I am sure if you point that out to him, he'll say, "but that's diiiiiiffffereeeent...." Just because of that little piece of metal on a policeman's chest. After all, they're "Only Ones," of course. Were I Eric Thompson I'd be more than a bit tempted to tell Mr. Goddard to take his "social responsibility" and blow it out his ass, but maybe that's just me.