“An armed society is a polite society.” Robert A. Heinlein
It doesn’t take a trained professional to look at photos of the Phoenix Shooter-a 22-year-old charged with trying to kill a congresswoman in a shooting spree that left six dead-to realize the man is mental unstable. He has the stereotypical look of a madman, a nutcase, a loon, a man with a few screws loose, a nutjob, a nutter, a retard, a mental deficient, a crazy.
But this is America, and there is no law against being crazy. Where there are laws about insanity, they usually require that the insane person sign themselves into a facility and that they can then sign themselves out if they want to. There are no laws that force someone to take their medications and no way to enforce them where they to exist. The only time the law can do anything is once they do something really odd, like kill a half dozen people.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says, according to my Brother-in-Law, we all have the right to carry as many AK-47s as we can afford. The vast horde of gun nuts in America don’t want laws that keeps anyone from buying guns, because in the fullness of time and common sense, this will turn into laws that say No One can buy guns. So they are perfectly happy to take their chances with the occasional mad person going on a shooting spree, so long as they personally have a gun close at hand to blow any insane person away that comes near them.
Among my all time favorite films are Dirty Harry, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and The Matrix. These are films that glorify guns and the cold blooded execution of anyone that the heroes deem worthy of death. None of these films inspired me to run out and buy a Colt 45 or a Desert Eagle or an UZI. No the film that made me want an Uzi was The Terminator. And a long slide 45 automatic. I did own a gun at one time, it was Ruger 357 magnum. I really wanted one of those long barreled Smith and Wesson 44 Magnums like Dirty Harry carried, but the security company I was working for didn’t like the idea for some reason. It comes as no surprise that sales of Glocks have shot up in Arizona since madman Jared used one to murder six people and injure fourteen others.
Working security I met a few nut jobs who carried guns and worked from the general theory that this made them invulnerable. One of these guys got himself beat up and his gun stolen. He was lucky not to get killed. One of the many side stories in the Phoenix Shooting was some gungho moron who heard the shoots and ran out to be a hero, if only he had been quicker, he could have saved everyone. Uh, yeah, maybe. Or he could have been one more nameless victim shot when the Congresswoman was shot. People who run towards gunfire are also nutcases.
Crazy people can be forcibly committed. There are small trails where a jury decides whether or not to have someone locked up. There are restrickens on who can just walk in off the street and legally buy a gun, so why not add insanity to the list? Because it could be argued that anyone who wants to own a gun is by definition insane. Guns are bad things. They are designed to kill-and no I don’t give a damn about Cup Matches and the Olympics and I am not overly worried about surviving in a post apocalyptic world.
When the story first broke and the idea running around was that this had something to do with negative campaign advertisements it was a story that made a certain amount of sense. Aren’t we all tired of these damned ads and don’t we all want to shoot those self righteous assholes who smugly announce that they approve this hate message? But no, it was just a nutcase.
Growing up in one of Fort Worth, Texas’s many fine ghettos I knew a lot of people who owned guns and I heard countless more that I didn’t know. These were not just people who owned guns, these were people who used them, a lot. These people were not nutcases, they were just desperate. I tend to view desperate people with guns as slightly worse than crazy people with guns.
The things that make guns so useful as weapons are the same things that make them so deadly in the hands of crazies. They are easy to operate, requiring virtually no skill to kill someone and needing only enough strength to pull the trigger. They can be expensive, but if your going on a killing spree you aren’t really planning to max out your 401k. Even in places where there are limits on ammunition sales, there are enough places to buy ammo that you just need to drive around to load up with a few hundred rounds.
I tend to agree Chris Rock on this one.
