Brad Hicks wrote this on FaceBook. It's about how we have so many mass shootings in the USofA. Not why, how.
--Kim
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Over on Reddit, some foreigner just asked how it's even POSSIBLE for America to have five spree-killings in 48 hours. Here's what I just wrote:
Okay, look. Let's assume that there are a bunch of people who're all going to be at or near the same spot and you have just plain had enough. You want them dead AND, importantly, you're also suicidal, so you don't care if you live through it or not.
What's stopping you? In America, probably nothing. Let's walk you through the process.
Assuming this is your first (and only) mass murder, there's probably nothing stopping you from going down to any reasonably large sporting goods store and buying either a pistol, rifle, or some weird tech compromise between the two that (a) fires 2-3 rounds per second with an easy-pull trigger and (b) can be bought with an optional magazine that'll let you load it with 20 or even 40 rounds. And of course a carton of ammunition. Put it on your credit card -- it's not like you're expecting to have to pay it off, now, are you?
If there's a current restraining order against you AND that restraining order was issued by one of the FEW states or municipalities that submit accurate, up-to-date records to the gun-sellers' mandatory background check system, this might be a little harder for you. It probably won't; like I said, hardly anybody puts the effort into keeping this system up to date. And such restraining orders age off; it doesn't matter how many people you've beaten up or even shot, as long as you were acquitted or allowed to plead it down to a misdemeanor, any sporting goods store or specialty gun shop can still sell you your mass-murder/suicide tool and will cheerfully do so. Some of them will even do so if you tell them that's what it's for -- the clerk is technically obligated to say, "I hope you're kidding" and as long as you say, "I didn't mean it" it's still perfectly routine and okay. I think every county in the US has at least one well-publicized, easy to find place you can do this.
But yeah, if you're a convicted felon or have the amazingly rare bad luck that your restraining order is actually in the system, you'll have to go online. It won't take you 5 minutes of Google searching to find a perfectly legal website that "connects private sellers with legal gun purchasers" or some similar euphemism. The legal fiction is that this is for people who perfectly legally bought guns, decided that they need the money or don't want the gun any more, and are looking for some other perfectly legal perfectly harmless citizen to buy it off of them.
If it were someone who was, say, buying them wholesale in bulk from manufacturers, or buying stolen guns from thieves no questions asked, and selling these guns to people who can't pass a background check EVEN in America, that would be illegal. There is a federal government agency whose job it is to look for such illegal sellers. Their budget and manpower have been cut by every Republican president since 1980. They make so few arrests and bring so few cases that it makes the news when they do. Most illegal sellers get old and retire before they get their fist query letter. And like I said, it only takes a few minutes of Google searching to find one in your area.
So, there. It took you at most a couple of days, a credit card advance that you have no intention of paying off, and you have a weapon of war. Go to town on whatever public gathering you want. If you are suicidal, save a couple of bullets for yourself. If your plan was to retire to prison (which, if your out-of-prison life is hellish enough, might not be so bad) all you have to do is put the weapon down, step away from it, and lie down when the police show up to collect you, and you can retire in no worse discomfort than you were already in, with the warm confident feeling that you Really Showed Them.
So it's really easy. There's nothing stopping you. Why wouldn't you?
Yeah, some of this is that there are a lot of us who want to, and that might be weird by global standards. With our cut-throat economy and a lot of people abandoned in areas where the jobs are never coming back, it's pretty easy for a guy to end up so unemployed that no woman will ever take him seriously as a potential mate, where if he had a wife and kids and a house he lost them all and is never going to get them back, and so in debt that he can't even afford to move to where the jobs are and start over, if he even knew how, which he doesn't. That's usually who snaps, and we have more people in that situation than anywhere in the world except maybe Russia or the UK. Russia and the UK know better than to make it so easy for them to buy mass-murder tools, so all theirs can do is beat some people up and/or drink themselves to death. Unlike them, our vast numbers of guys who are pushed to the breaking point have Freedom.
But before they snap, we're not doing anything to help them, because that would be Socialism, and after they snap, we're not doing anything to stop them, because that would Infringe On the Sacred Liberties of the people who haven't snapped yet, or who have but claim that they haven't. In both cases, Lord knows, we Wouldn't Want That.
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