Guns

Sandy Hook, Connecticutt.  Another name to add to the list of horrors.  Oddly enough, according to those who have studied the matter, these events tend to take place in small towns or rural environments, not because there is something inherently amiss in these places, but because the opportunity to be different and to find a group of people who share your oddness is remote.  Who knows why the shooter developed such a profound mental illness; since he killed members of his family, we will probably never know for sure.

What is clear, however, is that the specious, self-serving arguments of anti-gun-control people carry part of the responsibility.  People who hunt have hunting rifles; people who have a gun at home for self-protection don't usually choose assault weapons unless they are part of the crazies who think the government is going to invade their space and snatch up their precious freedoms.  I come from a military family, and although we had rifles at home, you never really saw them or cared where they were.  They were used for hunting. 

All this bullshit about people killing people, not guns, is just that--bovine excrement.  You don't read about a disturbed kid or man entering a shopping mall and killing 30 people with a dagger.  Ex-mayor Mario Cuomo, who apparently is an idiot, stated that if someone had had a gun in the movie theater, that person would have shot and killed the shooter who cut loose during the showing of the latest Batman movie.  Oh, what an intelligent solution, what depth of analysis, what almost mythical stupidity.  Do you want to go to the movies knowing that several people there have entered the theater armed, perhaps with assault weapons?

But there is no penetrating the concrete skulls of the people who don't want any kind of weapons banned, because they refuse to read studies, view statistics, understand the complexities of crime control and rates, or compromise.  Their motives are not constitutional, they are psychological.  They are the gun equivalents of screwball religious sects and other groups motivated by something on the boil in the depths of their brains. 

It must really be miserable to live a life so invaded by fear or the need to make yourself big and important that you need assault weapons, bazookas, hand grenades. 

Not to mention that sociopath in Arizona who bought weapons for the drug cartels in Mexico and shipped them here!  He claims he is so, so sorry, wished he hadn't done it, but that is what any sociopath says once he gets caught.  Well, he should have thought of all this before he did it, not after the fact.  He has blood on his hands.