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Thank goodness the ivory towered-people are watching over us!

(My comments in brown)

Let's lay down our right to bear arms

POSTED: 11:25 a.m. EDT, April 20, 2007
By Tom Plate
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Tom Plate, former editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times, is a professor of communication and policy studies at UCLA. He is author of a new book, "Confessions of an American Media Man."

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Most days, it is not at all hard to feel proud to be an American. But on days such as this, it is very difficult.. Right here is where I believe the root of the problem is for most liberals. I ain't buying the "most days" bit either. They hate America 24/7/365.

The pain that the parents of the slain students feel hits deep into everyone's hearts. At the University of California, Los Angeles, students are talking about little else. It is not that they feel especially vulnerable because they are students at a major university, as is Virginia Tech, but because they are (to be blunt) citizens of High Noon America. Wow! They feel like they're in a movie? All of them?

"High Noon" is a famous film. The 1952 Western told the story of a town marshal (played by the superstar actor Gary Cooper) who is forced to eliminate a gang of killers by himself. They are eventually gunned down. So what's the problem?

The use of guns is often the American technique of choice for all kinds of conflict resolution. Our famous Constitution, about which many of us are generally so proud, enshrines -- along with the right to freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly -- the right to own guns. That's an apples and oranges list if there ever was one. Liberals also never get it that without the orange, the apples can be easily taken away.

Not all of us are so proud and triumphant about the gun-guarantee clause. The right to free speech, press, religion and assembly and so on seem to be working well, but the gun part, not so much. Here it comes. Wait for it...

Let me explain. Some misguided people will focus on the fact that the 23-year-old student who killed his classmates and others at Virginia Tech was ethnically Korean. This is one of those observations that's 99.99 percent irrelevant. What are we to make of the fact that he is Korean? Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun, it looks like he may have just put together a peace formula for civil war-wracked Sudan -- a formula that escaped his predecessor. No normal person believes the shooter shot Americans because he was Korean. Next.

So let's just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun. And there it is. Those inanimate little pieces of steel and plastic shot all those people. Good Lord, he didn't even acknowledge the shooter as the person who carried the terrible guns into the buildings where they did their damage!

In the nineties, the Los Angeles Times courageously endorsed an all-but-complete ban on privately owned guns, in an effort to greatly reduce their availability. By the time the series of editorials had concluded, the newspaper had received more angry letters and fiery faxes from the well-armed U.S. gun lobby than on any other issue during my privileged six-year tenure as the newspaper's editorial page editor. People who disagreed with that stupid gun ban are not even real people. They were the "well-armed U.S. gun lobby".

But the paper, by the way, also received more supportive letters than on any other issue about which it editorialized during that era. The common sense of ordinary citizens . (Oh! There's the real people..."ordinary citizens") told them that whatever Americans were and are good for, carrying around guns like costume jewelry was not on our Mature List of Notable Cultural Accomplishments. Don't be alarmed...I think we made the Immature List of Notable Cultural Accomplishments!

"Guns don't kill people," goes the gun lobby's absurd mantra. Far fewer guns in America would logically result in far fewer deaths from people pulling the trigger. The probability of the Virginia Tech gun massacre happening would have been greatly reduced if guns weren't so easily available to ordinary citizens. Professor John Lott would like a word with you, Nancy.

Foreigners sometimes believe that celebrities in America are more often the targets of gun violence than the rest of us. Not true. Celebrity shootings just make better news stories, so perhaps they seem common. They're not. All of us are targets because with so many guns swishing around our culture, no one is immune -- not even us non-celebrities. Doy!!

When the great pop composer and legendary member of the Beatles John Lennon was shot in 1980 in New York, many in the foreign press tabbed it a war on celebrities. Now, some in the media will declare a war on students or some-such. This is all misplaced. The correct target of our concern needs to be guns. America has more than it can possibly handle. How many can our society handle? My opinion is: as close to zero as possible. Another example of the ease with which one can purchase guns in New York...wait a minute. Guns are banned in New York, aren't they? Why yes, they are. The assassin was apparently lucid enough to buy his gun in Hawaii and travel all the way to New York, (illegally), to do the deed.

Last month, I was robbed at 10 in the evening in the alley behind my home. As I was carrying groceries inside, a man with a gun approached me where my car was parked. The gun he carried featured one of those red-dot laser beams, which he pointed right at my head.

Because I'm anything but a James Bond type, I quickly complied with all of his requests. Perhaps because of my rapid response (it is called surrender), (Barf!) he chose not to shoot me; but he just as easily could have. What was to stop him? Oh, this guy was in control of the gun? The gun wasn't running the show like the VT incident you mentioned above?

This occurred in Beverly Hills, a low-crime area dotted with upscale boutiques, restaurants and businesses -- a city best known perhaps for its glamour and celebrity sightings. Yeah, we've heard of it.

Oh, and police tell me the armed robber definitely was not Korean. Not that I would have known one way or the other: Basically the only thing I saw or can remember was the gun, with the red dot, pointed right at my head. He's not Korean? You definitely know that? Or is that some cheap way of continuing your thread of perceived racism throughout your entire little diatribe here?

A near-death experience does focus the mind. We need to get rid of our guns. And here we are at the end, and we couldn't be farther apart on the solution.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer. This is part of an occasional series of commentaries on CNN.com that offers a broad range of perspectives, thoughts and points of view.