Death Race 2000 Held in DC

There's been some surprising revelations regarding Tonya Bell, the driver that laughed while plowing down pedestrians at a southwest Washington street fair. Turns out she was a habitual criminal and addict. She had been smoking crack the entire day prior to loading her 7 year old daughter up in the family vehicle to go out and drive over pedestrians and even some strollers. Well it also turns out that she was working in the offices of Marion Barry. You know, the ex-DC mayor that had a coke problem of his own... I wonder if that was a coincidence. Isn't there some rule about felons associating with other felons?

At any rate...

Bell's been charged with aggravated assault while armed; armed with a motor vehicle that is. You know what's really interesting? Not a single democrat is calling for common sense automobile control laws. There's no calls for waiting periods before a person can buy a car. There's no whining for background checks and there's not an endless parade of asshats calling for a repeal of the constitutional amendment that grants citizens the right to drive... Oh yeah, there isn't one. Driving is a privilege not a right.

If one looks at the latest data that the Centers for Disease Control has to offer (2004), one finds that there were 29,569 gun related deaths reported for that year. At first blush, that seems excessive until one puts that number in the proper light. First off that number includes deaths caused by law enforcement in the performance of their duty (CDC reports that as being about 1.05% of the reported number) and those deaths caused by individuals engaging in self defense (The CDC has no statistic). So some portion of that number were justifiable shootings. Even if those facts didn't exist, if one places this number along side other causes of death you'll find that it is smaller than other causes of death. In 2004 the CDC reports 45,113 motor vehicle deaths. So as I said above this is a far more common cause of death so where's the liberal cries for reasonable motor vehicle control laws? Gun related deaths are so low, it doesn't even make it to the CDC's top 10 causes of death in the US. In fact in 2004, over 120,000 died from chronic lower respiratory diseases and over 1.35 million died from heart attack, cancer or stroke.

You can't control the deadly desires of the mentally ill or criminally inclined by outlawing specific tools. Tonya Hall proves that they are a resourceful bunch. They can simply resort to different tools to commit their crimes and in fact often do, even when they can chose to use a gun. Removing the tool does not remove the desire.