If only there were no guns

Hoplophobes should be careful what they pray for

by Jeff Knox

The day before the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook atrocity, another demented little coward decided to do something so vile and outrageous that he would be remembered forever and get payback on all of those people who had made his miserable little life unbearable. As has been my longstanding policy, I will not mention the worm's name. I refuse to give him the publicity. The Sheriff of Arapahoe County took a similar position, but unfortunately, the "legitimate media" insisted on repeating the attacker's name, showing his picture, and talking about his motives – all things which sociologists and criminologists have said fuel rampage killers and encourage copy-cats.

The person whose name should be on everyone's lips after this outrage is Claire Davis, a beautiful young woman who was shot in the face at point-blank range for no reason except that a petulant scumbag wanted attention, and she happened to be in front of him. Both sides in the political argument over guns should respect and pray for the victims of these types of atrocities, not try to use the tragedies to promote a political agenda. The initial center of attention for reporters and commentators in this case should have been Clair and her family, and they should remain in our thoughts.

The Arapahoe HS attack demonstrates once again that when these cowards are challenged, they fold. Some psychologists suggest, correctly I suspect, that a rampage killing is a suicidal act, but with a weird score-keeping component. In the case of the Sandy Hook fiend, evidence suggests that he was playing out a bizarre video game fantasy in competition with previous mass murderers and that he killed himself to keep anyone else from capturing his "score." I suspect that the suicide upon challenge phenomenon also has something to do with plans meeting harsh realities. The rampagers tend to put a great deal of thought and planning into their weapons, entrance, and "exit," but the middle part tends to remain rather generic; "kill a bunch of people." Once they accomplish the first steps of their plan and are into the hazy phase, a challenge from a cop or other armed defender seems to trigger the next planned step – suicide.

Of course the facts of this case, like previous cases, will have little bearing on the hyperbole spewing from the propaganda machines of Brady, Bloomberg, and the Violence Policy Center. They are already making the claim that it's a big problem that an 18-year old can legally purchase a shotgun, despite the fact that tens of thousands of 18-year olds buy and responsibly own shotguns every year, along with hundreds of thousands bought by parents, and tens of millions more that are readily available to young people for hunting or defensive use with only a small fraction of a percent ever doing anything criminal or stupid with those guns. Meanwhile millions learn responsibility, discipline, respect, and other valuable lessons.

Further digging would probably find that young people use their access to firearms in defense of themselves and their families at least as frequently as any bad apples criminally abuse their firearm access.

But the hoplophobes will bemoan the easy availability of firearms to people who are legally old enough to vote and serve in the military. They will then transition that cry into a call for action to stop the "epidemic of children gaining access to guns" and killing themselves and others (despite the fact that statistics reflect record low and declining criminal misuse and firearm accidents). Finally, they will segue to the idea that Congress or state legislators must "do something," and the "something" they will settle on will be "universal background checks – which is a solution that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the attack at Arapahoe High, or the attack at the Washington Navy Yard, or the attack at Sandy Hook, or the Sikh Temple attack, or the Batman Movie attack, or the Virginia Tech attack, or any other "active shooter" event I can recall.

In every one of those cases, the attacker either jumped through the hoops and passed the background check, or stole the guns from someone else who had. And for those who say, "but if only guns weren't so easy to get..." let me point out that, even if it were possible to make guns magically vanish, that wouldn't stop these demented cowards. If rampagers actually couldn't get their hands on guns, what do you think they would do, say oh well, never mind, back to class?

Or would they pour that obsessive focus and evil intellect into carefully planning and building pressure cooker bombs and Molotov cocktails?

The worst mass murders in our nation's history did not involve guns. Anti-rights radicals need to be careful what they pray for.

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