{"id":1331,"date":"2007-04-16T18:23:25","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T18:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/16\/a-vain-plea-for-decorum\/"},"modified":"2007-04-16T18:23:25","modified_gmt":"2007-04-16T18:23:25","slug":"a-vain-plea-for-decorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/16\/a-vain-plea-for-decorum\/","title":{"rendered":"A Vain Plea for Decorum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like everybody else, I&#8217;m horrified by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2007\/US\/04\/16\/vtech.shooting\/index.html\">shooting rampage at Virginia Tech<\/a>. It&#8217;s the sort of nightmare situation you wouldn&#8217;t wish on your worst enemy.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the bodies aren&#8217;t even cold yet, and already the blogosphere is a-flutter with people touting this as proof that the US needs to change its gun laws in one direction or another. I&#8217;m not going to link to them, but I&#8217;ve already seen three or four pieces using this to push one side or the other of the gun control debate, and I have a simple message for those people:<\/p>\n<p>Stop. Please, just stop.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>For the love of God, show a little tact, and shut up, at least until the families of the victims have been notified, and the community has had a chance to grieve a little. Next Monday would be a fine time to start&#8211; personally, I&#8217;d prefer &#8220;never,&#8221; but at a minimum, I&#8217;d say that while there are still families out there who don&#8217;t know whether their loved ones are alive or dead, you can sit on your hands, and spare us all your opinions.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re going to have the rest of your life&#8211; may it be a long and happy one&#8211; to spend telling us all how this incident absolutely and irrefutably confirms your position on gun control. There are thirty-three people in Blacksburg who are never going to get that chance. Show a little respect, and spare us your wisdom for a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like everybody else, I&#8217;m horrified by the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. It&#8217;s the sort of nightmare situation you wouldn&#8217;t wish on your worst enemy. Of course, the bodies aren&#8217;t even cold yet, and already the blogosphere is a-flutter with people touting this as proof that the US needs to change its gun laws in&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/16\/a-vain-plea-for-decorum\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Vain Plea for Decorum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}