Europe is reeling from the shock of its first American-style school massacre. The carnage in Erfurt defies imaginations in the European Union, where violent crime is nowhere near the daily occurrence we experience in the United States.
Ironically, the German Parliament was in the process of passing new gun-control legislation when the attack happened. Germany already has some of the strictest gun control laws in Western Europe, none of which could have prevented this massacre.
The shooter, Robert Steinhaeuser, acquired his guns legally by joining a gun club and qualifying for handgun and shotgun licenses. The attack was clearly planned months in advance, and the disgruntled student clearly thought out his plans before implementing them.
The kind of cold-blooded determination exemplified by Steinhaeuser, and by other school attackers such as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, will be able to overcome any restrictions on firearms so long as the weapons somehow exist.
In Steinhaeuser's case, much of the ammunition he carried into the school was hoarded during a period of several months, bought from the black market. Even if he had been unable to get his guns legally, he could have easily found them from illegal sources.
Huge numbers of weapons are finding their ways into Western Europe from the former Soviet Republics and the Balkans, and no amount of law - making seems able to stop them.
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In the case of the Columbine shooters, they acquired almost all of their weapons and ammunition illegally, breaking numerous state and federal gun control regulations before even firing a shot. The law was unable to stop them, and new laws will be similarly helpless.
The difficulty in passing laws to restrict gun violence is that criminals who plan their attacks well in advance will always be able to find ways to acquire weapons. Anyone with reasonable intelligence willing to spend six months planning a massacre will have little trouble finding ways to acquire anything he needs to carry it out.
As has often been pointed out by advocates of the second amendment, passing new laws will only affect law-abiding citizens. People with no respect for the law will not change their ways or alter their longstanding plans for a massacre just because some well-intentioned legislators rubber - stamped another feel-good gun control measure.
Of course, after a tragedy such as the Erfurt or Columbine massacres, people demand something be done to prevent it in the future. Government has no real problem-solving tools at its disposal, since it cannot alter society with a wave of the legal wand, despite what many elected and un-elected officials may think.
So all that happens is that governments pass ineffective laws that only alter the behavior of citizens not planning massacres, and those who are plotting and hoarding weapons continue waiting for their day of blood unhindered.
This mentality that all social problems can be solved by government intervention continues to be popular despite its utter lack of success. For as long as human society has existed, kings and congresses have tried to mold society as they saw fit by using laws. In the end, all of them failed: crime still exists.
What needs to be addressed is the decay at the heart of western society that is producing young people capable of these types of crimes.
Of course, we have no clear way of doing that. No law can be passed to make people have ethics, or value life, abhor murder or possess nobility. Indeed, perhaps nothing can be done but watch the irresistible energy of cultural entropy erode the ethical foundations of our civilization until nothing is left.
Change, if it comes at all, can only come from one source: individuals working to make the world a better place. Sounds cheesy, but the fact of the matter is that only individuals cause change; groups and nations follow trends and statistical patterns, but at the basest level it is individuals who decide to alter their lives that brings about changes to society.
Instead of asking what government can do to prevent school shootings, perhaps you should be asking what you can do.
by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
