Shooting nearby

Just heard today that there was a shooting nearby. There's an online report of it at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/baycitynews/archive/2006/12/02/hayward02.DTL

Hayward is a city in the bay area that's prob about 30 mins drive from here. The 880 is a highway I've used several times to get to Berkeley. Apparently ppl were in chartered buses going to the "big game", the Stanford vs Berkeley Football game (Stanford and Berkeley are arch rivals, way worse than RI and ACS) and on the way down they took a different highway cos the 880 was closed for the investigations.

My roommate says there's this group (I forget what it's called) that's pushing for the outlawing of handguns. It's really hard to outlaw guns in the US just because guns are such a traditional part of culture in a lot of places (think rural hunting, which used to be a regular pastime and source of food, and maybe even cowboy movies though i'm not sure about the latter). But handguns (pistols and the likes) would probably be easier to outlaw than all kinds of guns at one go. Apparently the National Rifles Association has this argument that without guns, who's going to protect you from the people with guns. Which is a really stupid but also very persuasive argument cos it plays into people's insecurities that if they give up their guns, or their right to own one, they're at a disadvantage if someone else manages to get a gun. But it's a cyclical argument that seems very flawed and stupid. Oh well. I'm glad that at least there are people pushing for the outlawing of handguns, which I think would go a really long way in making America safer. But it'd be a real pain to implement so I hope and pray they implement it well. Who knows what'll happen if they don't.