What's with the One with the Hammer?

This post may be somewhat self-defeating, because it references an image that, despite it being readily available online, I refuse to include. I refuse to include it because it is of the cowardly shitbag who committed the massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 32 innocent people and then himself. I won't write his name or post any pictures of him (or link to his name or pictures of him) in any publicly available forum (e.g. this webpage) because to do so would be helping him to achieve exactly what he wanted to through his atrocity--to have as many human beings as possible know his name and know his face. Given that my blog is slightly below the level of a major news outlet (current readership: approx. 3), I am afforded the luxury of being able to do my small part to not give the worthless asshole what he wanted.

For our purposes, I'll refer to him as "Pussy McNutJob" and associate him with the image of Lurky (pictured), the sidekick of the main villain in "Rainbow Brite", because I figure that's a reasonable equivalent to how badass McNutJob was (with no disrespect intended towards the real Lurky).

As I mentioned, pictures of McNutJob are all over the internet; that's because earlier today NBC News in New York received a package that was mailed to them by McNutJob himself--after he committed the first two murders on Monday--that included images and videos of the creepy douche along with his senseless diatribes against the world. All the news channels have been showing these pictures over and over again, most of which feature McNutJob--sometimes in an outfit that appeared to be assembled from a Columbine Massacre Dress-Up Kit--striking ostensibly "tough" poses with one or both of the two handguns that he likely used in the killings. Mixed in in the middle, however, is a rather random shot of McNutJob holding an ordinary claw hammer with both hands over one shoulder and bearing his teeth as if preparing to strike with what he no doubt imagined looked like fury.

If you saw this picture without knowing who McNutJob was or what he had done...you would be hard-pressed not to find it laughable.

The image says everything about what a weakling McNutJob was: his pose is awkward, his expression forced and unconvincing, and his insubstantial physical form in sparse surroundings tell the story of a completely powerless individual. Take the firearm out of his hands and he's nothing.

With that in mind, I don't understand how anyone couldn't see what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday as an excellent case for strengthening gun control in America. The only people who need guns in any kind of a "positive" sense (though it's hard to think of deadly weapons as positive) are police officers, active members of the military and maybe civilians who live in areas where they are at risk of being attacked by dangerous animals (not, for example, deer or quail). Everyone else who owns a gun (or guns) has one because he wants one.

People who find themselves in the latter category but argue that they need their guns ought to examine who's in their company with that belief. Pussy McNutJob needed his guns to finally assert himself at the very end of his short and meaningless life. He doesn't deserve to be known now, and the 32 people who were gunned down at Virgina Tech on Monday certainly didn't deserve to lose their lives at his hands. Guns don't represent strength or security; on the contrary, they merely provide the intellectually and emotionally weak with temporary undeserved power--stolen power, really--over those who, as displayed by very actions taken against them, are immeasurably superior to them and will remain so forever. The men and women who died on a college campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, earlier this week never needed guns to make their presence known in the world--and they never will.

UPDATE 1: Asian cinema master "Ronnie" has offered me his theory that Pussy McNutJob, with his "hammer pose", may have been attempting to recreate this moment from the 2003 South Korean film Oldboy:Taken out of context, I think that--if McNutJob was indeed trying to copy this particular image--it makes his efforts even more pathetic.

UPDATE 2 (04/19/07): Legitimate news outlets are down with Ronnie's theory (good eye, Ronnie), which means that I have scooped them all. Take that, news!