Thursday, December 09, 2004

"Dimebag" Darrell Shot By Lunatic

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of John Lennon's assassination by a deranged fan. Two days before that, another nutjob named Mr. Lepine shot and killed a classroom full of women studying engineering, specifically targeting them because of their gender. Now, "Dimebag" Darrell is dead due to a crazed individual.

Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott, former lead guitarist of metal heavyweight Pantera, was playing the first song of a set with his new band Damageplan when a hooded man lept onto the stage and fired several shots at him from point blank range. The assailant also killed a bouncer, two fans from the crowd, and wounded two others.

Some might say that this is directly related to the celebrity culture that we live in; by placing all of our hopes and dreams on these strangers, when they make a decision that we don't agree with, some of the more deluded in the audience will go ballistic.

I think a good step would be to ban all handguns. They are useless. There is no way that America is safer because anyone can wander into a 7-ll and put a slug in the cashier's head.

Admittedly, in Canada, we do have some gun violence but this is often thwarted by security or police because it is hard to hide a rifle. Also, many of the gun deaths are related to our infamous biker wars (Hells vs. other gangs, etc.) so it is relatively safe up here in this cold wasteland.

I call on all rational individuals to contact their government leaders to demand a ban to all handguns. If you have ever listened to the Beatles or Pantera, you have two good reasons to pick up that phone.