I am not an expert on firearms. I've done some basic teaching and a long time ago, I was a rangemaster/instructor, as certified by the Navy. I've not taken oodles of courses. I have competed in a few matches within the last year. I've never made a penny from firearms.
So now, I'm not an expert.
I have used a gun to defend myself, but again, that doesn't make me an expert.
I wrote this in an e-mail a little bit ago:
These clowns have a few things in common: They are all serious losers. They would never amount to anything. But with a gun, everyone knows who they are/were. Even in death, they are famous. They become stars.
Deny them that. Make them non-persons. How about making it a felony (10+ years) to publically disclose or publish the name of a spree killer? Hell, make it mandatory that they be cremated and their ashes disposed of in a septic tank or a sewage treatment plant.
I think that needs to be discussed. The Jackhole of Newtown would have been just another nameless near-crazy person. Maybe he would have wigged out in a coffee bar when the barista got his latte order wrong and he'd be in jail for assault. Now he's famous. Every politician in DC knows who he was. Every anchorman, every editorial writer, every school administrator, they know his name. He has been the focus of the national discussion for a week.
Probably just what the little assclown wanted.
So let's take a page from the Soviet Union's handbook and let's erase these clowns from history. Make them die as they lived: Lonely, forgotten cranks.
That's one thing.
Second, the point has been made by others that it is not a guarantee that having any armed teachers or school personnel would stop a spree killer. They might freeze or they might lose a gunfight. So what? Only fools ask for such things to be guaranteed. In the shooting at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs five years ago, there were two members of the congregation who were acting as security guards.
One froze, the other didn't, and she ended the shooter.
Third, and I've made this point before
ad nauseum: Look at where these spree killers go to commit their crimes. They aren't going into shooting ranges or gun shows. They are going into places where it is forbidden to carry firearms. They are hunting people. They are going for places where resistance is unlikely. The Asswipe of Ft. Hood knew that soldiers on post were not allowed to carry firearms and so he had a bit of happy slaughtering before the cops arrived.
Gun-free zones both keep law-abiding people from carrying weapons and they tell the possible killers that they are guaranteed several minutes of sanguinary shooting before the cops roll in.
Fourth, any consideration of the fatality rate of children will show this: Over 6,000 children die each year in motor vehicle accidents. Which means, on average, the same number of kids died in car accidents on the same day as the Newtown Asshat shot up that school. Of that 6,000, it's probably a reasonable supposition that a thousand or so died being driven to or from school. So in the first half of the school year, 20 kids died in school shootings, 500 died commuting to school.
The difference is in numbers at once versus drips and drabs. Less than 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, which was less than the number who died in car crashes that month. But we accept the carnage on the roads as a cost of modern life. 3,000 people don't die in four crashes on the roads.
I bring up 9-11 for a reason: The reaction to it. As a result of those attacks, we are far less free as a nation. The government is basically watching everything everyone does. Oh, maybe they don't have eyeballs on you, right now, but every credit card transaction, every swipe of a debit card, every e-mail you send, every fax, every text message, every airline ticket and likely even every phone call you make is recorded and stored for later analysis. The cops can go rifling through your financials without a warrant, they can track your every move if your cell phone is turned on. They can even do "sneak and peek" searches and go back for a real warrant later.
Pilots know this stuff all too well. Even though the 9-11 attacks were carried out using fully-fueled airliners as cruise missiles, anyone who flies so much as a J-3 Cub within 60 miles of D.C. has to have
special training.
Anyone who wants to fly that same J-3 into the "DC-3" airports has to be fingerprinted, undergo background checks, criminal history checks and file flight plans, and they probably can't fly that J-3, unless they have a transponder and radio. Despite the fact that nobody has attempted to carry out a terrorist attack with a Piper Cub (or a
Cessna 150), the restrictions are in place. Similar restrictions exist in a 60 nautical mile diameter circle around wherever the President happens to be.
If you fly on a commercial airliner, then you are all too familiar with
the vast amount of money that the Feds have spent to supposedly make air travel safer, including
meaningless bag searches.
And so now there is a tragic shooting and, as a result, restrictions will be levied against those who obey the law. You can bet that there will be a provision which erases the privacy of mental health records, so seeing a psychologist or doctor for any mental health issue will soon land you in another Federal database. Which of course means that many people who need help won't go get it, for fear of landing in that new database. People who have problems will choose instead to self-medicate. That's what happens and
it has happened before.
So there will be restrictions, probably to ten round magazines and stupid rules about meaningless cosmetic shit such as pistol grips and "flash hiders". If I owned a gun factory, I would have the CAD/CAM boys busily reverse-engineering SKS carbines which, when made without the issue bayonet or grenade launcher, will easily pass the same sort of restrictions that existed in the first "assault weapons" ban. Oh, it probably goes without saying that the 7.62mm cartridge for the SKS is far more effective than the 5.56mm of the AR-15. Unintended consequences, you know.
The ten-round magazine limit of the first ban sounded a temporary death knell for the "wonder nines", full-size large capacity 9mm handguns. Full-sized handguns shifted towards those cartridges whose magazine sizes justified them- .45s and .40s, sparking a renewed popularity, especially of the venerable (and arguably more effective) .45 ACP. That was a consequence of the first ban. A second one will have similar unintended consequences.
One thing the politicians in this country are good at is overreaction. And you can also bet heavily that the lawful gun owners will chafe about this and they will remember. This has all happened before and it is happening again.
Signs of overreach: The New York Times today published one of its editorials screeching about concealed carry. Doesn't matter that concealed carry has had little, if anything, to do with mass shootings, they still don't like it.
