The Gun Crime Blame Game

England is noting a big increase in gun crime for some reason, as is Australia. In both cases, confiscation is the rule of the day which suggests to me that the approach not only doesn't work, it's counter productive. In the lands of the disarmed it seems, the man with the one-shot popgun is king.

Perhaps the next time a mass shooting occurs, or even a minor affray with only 1-3 bodies to stack, perhaps we should be just as quick to blame not the shooter or the gun, but those who made the situation not only possible, but attractive to the perp. Let's face it; people are neither predictable nor are they particularly rational, at least not often enough. As a result, we sometimes get "muckers" out to run up a new high score and more often we get criminals who favor armed threats to part people from their valuables. Guns are not difficult to obtain. The mugger probably knows a burglar who found some on one of his adventures. The mucker has only to ask around to be introduced to someone who needs money more than a gun and doesn't care what the purchaser plans to do with it. In most cases, the purchaser seems pleasant and normal to the seller anyway. They are also not all that hard to make from scratch.

In any case the reason mass shooters run up such high scores is not so much because of the rate of fire of their guns, but  that they 1) pick a high density target rich environment, and 2) pick one where they face a minimum likelihood of armed resistance. Mass shooters seldom seem to operate longer than 5-10 minutes, and when confronted, politely off themselves, thus minimizing the risk to the responder.

Next time a newsworthy gun crime happens, let's immediately place the blame where it belongs, on the enablers. Those who stand firmly on the side of the mugger, the rapist, the mass shooter and their ilk by demanding that their victims be completely unable to defend themselves. Around here that would include Joe Salazar, currently working on running for Governor. He famously came out opposed to allowing campus co-eds to go armed for fear that the flighty little darlings might get nervous at someone walking behind them and simply shoot them as a precaution.

Most gun laws are state level issues, and the enablers work in state legislatures, but there are several who work at the Federal level who can be legitimately blamed as enablers of mass shooters. Let's make it abundantly clear that what runs up the body count is not that someone has a gun, but that only one person seems to have a gun.

Sound like a plan?