Posted on 08/04/2011 10:16:10 AM PDT by presidio9
His name is Vidar Eldholm, and he is 38, from Bergen on the west coast of Norway. These days he is the cultural director at the Norwegian Seamen's Church on E.52nd St., and his wife, Rita, is a deacon there, ready to deliver the sermon at the 5 o'clock service.
"This is a Sunday," Eldholm is saying in the afternoon, "when Norwegians will want to be with other Norwegians, because this time it has happened to us."
It is a small Lutheran church, and in the summer averages maybe 50 people on Sunday afternoons. And like all churches everywhere, it is a place built on belief. That is the irony of what happened the other day when a monster named Anders Behring Breivik turned himself into a killing machine on a small island called Utoya, north of Oslo.
PHOTOS: NORWAY TERROR ATTACKS
We were reminded again that a gun in the hands of a true believer like Breivik is still the greatest weapon of mass destruction of them all. We are conditioned now to think of terrorism as planes flying into our buildings, or explosions in the London subway, or a stupid little amateur trying to blow up a car in Times Square. All it still takes is one guy with a gun.
"We learn again that there are no guarantees, no matter how much we do to keep ourselves safe," Vidar Eldholm is saying as he gets ready to pray for the dead.
He pauses.
"You do what we will do today: You pray."
You pray for the young people that Breivik hunted down and killed, so many of them attending a Labor Party summer retreat. All this, according to the lunatic ravings of Breivik, because he had declared war on all those he believed had "betrayed" Europe.
So he blows up a building in Oslo, and then he goes to this island and starts shooting with these bullets designed to disintegrate inside the human body and cause the greatest possible internal damage.
"In New York and now in Norway," Vidar Eldholm was saying yesterday, "there is no way to protect yourself against such things."
So Breivik was the one this time who found all the explosives and firearms he needed, all in the name of his own beliefs, the ones about revolution against all those different from him.
"I don't believe in belief," E.M. Forster once said.
So it was Utoya Island in Norway on Friday, the way it was Tucson last winter, a meet-and-greet for a wonderful American politician named Gabrielle Giffords, who ended up with a bullet through her brain. Saturday night, a man started firing in a roller rink in Grand Prairie, Tex., an estranged husband firing on his wife and family, leaving six dead. It would have been worse if the owner of Forum Roller World, a man named Walt Hedrick, didn't shove kids out of the line of fire.
In a couple of weeks, a 15-year old former high school student in Socastee, S.C., goes on trial for shooting at a school resource officer and taking pipe bombs to school. Fifteen years old. Christian Helms is the kid's name. He isn't as famous as he wanted to be because he didn't kill anybody.
And people wonder sometimes why Mayor Bloomberg has conducted his own crusade against illegal guns, against all guns in the wrong hands. A recent Al Qaeda video was only stating the obvious when it talked about how easy it is to get a gun in America.
Now, across the world in Norway, we find that it is too easy everywhere. A layup.
In churches everywhere yesterday, in places where belief in God did not become a toxic mix with politics and madness and righteousness, they prayed for innocent dead whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a dangerous world.
And in the Norwegian Seamen's Church on E. 52nd, in front of three times as many people as usual, this is what Deacon Rita Eldholm said in her native language:
"It is difficult to find words for everything that moves in us at this time. When we lack words, it might be comforting to light candles. A living flame to give us a glimpse of hope."
As usual, the sportswriter's take on political events relies only on his own politcal views and suffers. Hate to break it to Professor Lupica, but you can't put the world's guns back in the bottle. Anders Breveik had the only guns on the island, and it took the inept police force 90 minutes to respond. That is the ONLY reason why the slaughter reached the proportions it did.
a gun in the hands of a maniac is the most powerful weapon
Perhaps, but then again, I gun in the hands of a Patriot is a guaranteer of freedom and liberty.
I'm much more worried about a maniac with unchecked political control of the United States.
ML/NJ
An airplane in the hands of a maniac is the most powerful weapon.
Fertilizer in the hands of a maniac is the most powerful weapon.
Etc.
There, fixed that sentence for the inept author.
The other point, of course, is that all it takes to stop the bad guy is a good guy with a gun - which in nanny states like Norway or New York just aren't around.
The police are spread too thin, and in most cases are way too slow.
Maybe. But Obama has killed a lot of people with a pen.
The world needs more Maniac Control.
How many lives would have ben saved if some of those murdered kids had guns and training on how to use them in self defense?
Any tool in the hand of a maniac is a potential danger. It is the empty hand of a victim, though, that is the ultimate danger.
A maniac can wreak havoc with a pen, if he has the authority of government. Stalin may have never pulled a single trigger, but he murdered so many people that he spawned the need to invent a new word: democide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
It is estimated that governments murdered well over 100 million of their own citizens in the 20th century.
The mistake that many make is to fixate on the means of the havoc rather than the person who caused it. In the case of the mass murder in Norway, not even the police were equipped to respond with armed force to resist him until such time had passed that he had murdered almost 90 people.
It appears that he would have murdered more but he ran out of victims within range of easy shooting.
The only thing I am reminded of, is what a putz Mike Lupica is.
The power to spend money you don’t have, without any credible plan to pay it back; in the hands of a minority beneficiary is also an awesome weapon.
Fertilizer in the hands of a maniac is the most powerful weapon.
The weapon is a mind committed to a plan, the "gun", "knife", "bomb", "plane", &c. is a tool. Inanimate objects have no will or purpose.
Regards,
GtG
Uh..I think there's a contradiction somewhere in that sentence..
gas chambers killed millions in the hands of a 1 fanatic.
Think of a nuke in the hands of a muslim.
Now, that’s power in the hands of an idiot.
Yes, just like a blank check in the hands of a politician is a powerful (and scary) weapon.
Hey Mike!
So is a keyboard in the hands of a mental and physical midget!
We think alike.
xactly.
A functioning nuke in Iranian hands.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.