TOM THE DANCING BUG: How to Tell the Difference Between an Open-Carry Patriot and a Deranged Killer

How to tell the difference between a Deranged Killer and the Easy Victim of a Deranged Killer? I’m sure the killer himself would tell you that it’s easy: one is carrying a firearm and the other isn’t.

Predatory sociopathic behavior thrives in an environment where there are lots of easy prey. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And the cops are notoriously late.

“An armed society is a polite society.”
~Heinlein

That reasoning sounds fine on paper but has yet to play out in real life.

If a society where everyone is armed is safer, then why does the U.S. experience mass shootings on a regular basis while most other first-world countries (where guns are harder to come by) do not? Why did Fort Hood suffer not one but two mass shootings in a span of five years if Deranged Killers only target “easy prey”?

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“Kevin_Harrelson” we hardly knew ye…

It seems safer to just walk around in riot gear all the time.

How can you tell racists from other BoingBoing readers?

Just so everyone knows:

I think I know why they retracted it: it made them look like they were against open carry, which they’re not. But it was pretty clear that whoever wrote it was against scaring the shit out of the general public, because this is the kind of thing that gets people quick to ban things.

And it’s not like we need to turn America into the wild west. Despite anything that anyone on either the left or right is telling you, violent crime is down. Way down. And that includes firearm-related crime.

What do we have to do about the worsening criminal conditions in America? Not much, really, because it’s not worsening. What do we have to do about the rising tied of gun-related violence? Not much, really, because it’s not rising. But we have to ban assault rifles! We have to ban video games! Bad things happened, and the people who did these things used assault rifles and played video games!

Except…yes, those were terrible events; but no, grasping for the first “solution” as soon as something bad happens is the wrong approach. Why are these things happening?

All you have to do is look to Prohibition to see what banning things gets you. Just talking about prohibition–or the imagined talking about prohibition–gets you assholes walking around with assault rifles.

“But Europe!”

Yeah, but it went beyond that, everything from social programs to decriminalization of other behaviors, like treating drug addiction like an illness rather than a crime.

Look at Colorado:

What do you know. They decriminalized a popular illegal drug, and violent crime went down. It’s almost as if violent crime is caused by something else, and it’s just that guns end up being the tools used in those crimes.

But I’m sure mental health didn’t play a part, right?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nidal-hasan-sentenced-to-death-for-fort-hood-shooting-rampage/2013/08/28/aad28de2-0ffa-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html

In the 2009 shooting, some choice quotes from that second story:

Hasan, who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan a few weeks later, shouted “Allahu ­akbar!” meaning “God is great,” before targeting soldiers with a high-powered, high-capacity handgun he had fitted with laser sights. He was apprehended by military police officers after firing more than 200 shots.

Hasan, an American-born Muslim, had exchanged e-mails with a leading al-Qaeda figure in which he asked whether those attacking fellow soldiers were martyrs. The e-mails were seen by the FBI. Hasan also once gave a presentation to Army doctors discussing Islam and suicide bombers and said Muslims should be allowed to leave the armed forces as conscientious objectors to avoid “adverse events.”

But nah, I’m sure it was about guns.

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Of course mental health played a part. Why do you think we’ve been using the term “Deranged Killers?” No one has suggested that guns are planning any of these mass shootings on their own.

But we’re not the only country that has Deranged Killers. Many other examples of deranged killers and would-be killers have already been discussed at length earlier in this thread. However we ARE the only first-world country where Deranged Killers engage in mass shootings on a regular basis.

Now, you could argue that this has nothing to do with how our country regulates the sale and use of firearms. It’s an argument I’d strongly disagree with, but one you needn’t be completely insane to believe. The one thing you CAN’T argue is that making sure everyone has access to firearms is the best way to prevent mass shootings. The reason you can’t make this argument is that the only first-world country which has a constitutionally protected right to firearms is also the only first-world country which regularly experiences mass shootings.

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