Of course, we’ll never catch up to to Canada at the rate we are going …

I have no interest in eviscerating the second amendment. A simple repeal is all that is needed. Then it can RIP, uneviscerated.

Broadly speaking, the number of gun owners in the US is roughly equal to the number of vehicle drivers (same order of magnitude). The number of guns is roughly equal to the number of vehicles (again, same order of magnitude), and is rather higher than the number of gun owners/vehicle drivers. Respective numbers are high tens of millions for the former, low hundreds of millions for the latter.

The number of gun-related deaths is roughly a third to a half of the number of vehicle deaths, depending on who counts and how. That is despite extensive licensing requirements universally imposed on vehicle drivers and vehicles that are much less prevalent for guns.

Restrictions on Second Amendment rights such as registration, limiting types of firearms, numbers owned by one person, and the like, would set disturbing precedents for other Constitutional rights that have already been eroded by the bogus war on terror. Imagine a world in which typewriters had to be registered with the government, citizens had no access to photocopiers, and only those with special permission could own personal computers. Such a world has already existed: the former Soviet Union and its satellites, as defectors and emigres emphasized after escaping. The registration and permit system for old-fashioned typewriters there really got me.

But if you decide to impose restrictions on one amendment, don’t be surprised if philosophically similar restrictions follow for others. After all, as with today’s rifles, the Founders never envisioned word processors and the Internet, right?

Let’s look at some specific issues with guns. You have discussed in past entries horrific examples of toddlers picking up a parent’s gun and shooting others. These cases are in fact highly suspicious, and were I a police investigator, I’d be looking into the possibility that a parent framed a murder on the toddler to escape punishment, as most triggers require too much force for a toddler’s fingers to manage. That is doubly so when considering the parent just happened to leave the gun in the open in plain sight and reach of the child “by accident”.

Likewise, the recent case in Pennsylvania of a father “accidentally” shooting his 7–year-old son in his vehicle when his pistol just happened to go off is likewise highly suspicious. That’s especially true when considering that the son just happened to be special needs (autistic), the father was divorced and paying child support that was undoubtedly higher than the norm given the son’s disability, and he had just left a gun store to try to sell his weapons to pay bills.

These cases smack of murder committed by parents who were able to make the events look like an accident to receive lenient treatment and sympathy—maybe even avoid charges altogether. We seem to be all too willing to do so for each incident on the grounds that the parent “has suffered enough”. And then that’s another death chalked up to “irresponsible use of guns” as opposed to the true cause, which is a criminal act.

Now let’s consider the horrible events in Connecticut. Adam Lanza had been a problem for some years and required intervention that never came. From accounts he had recently been burning himself with a lighter, had played violent video games for hours and hours each day, was prone to tantrums and ever more violent outbursts, and had recently been posting online about wanting to kill his mother.

His mother in turn had pulled Adam out of school after the school wanted to pursue some sort of unspecified (so far) action for his issues, to homeschool him instead. You have been critical of homeschooling, Greg, and this aspect of the Lanza case deserves much more scrutiny. His mother had begun expressing fear of Adam, yet she isolated herself and him through homeschooling instead. She was also giving him a vegan diet, and perhaps this caused problems in some fashion. We don’t know. We also don’t know the whole story of how he managed to steal his mother’s weapons, as perhaps they were locked away but he found a way to get to them.

We do know what he did after killing his mother. But many questions remain about the school shootings, and much of what has come to light looks, well, off. Would someone like Adam with all his problems really have been able to pull off a mass shooting, or was there as reported initially a second shooter? Why all the discrepancies in accounts of weapons used vs. weapons left in the mother’s vehicle at the school? How to explain video of parents and families of victims apparently feigning sorrow for cameras, as in caught laughing one minute and crying on cue when the filming began the next?

The term “false flag operation” comes to mind here. It seems extraordinary that we have had so many mass shootings or attempts this year, especially since a President known to share your dislike of firearms and the Second Amendment won reelection, and especially since most of the shooters just happened to kill themselves after killing others. A government capable of the operation “Fast and Furious” that placed weapons in the hands of Mexican drug gangs is certainly capable of staging horrific mass shootings to arouse support to restrict firearms—and from there other rights.

You have been played, and your opprobrium is therefore misplaced. Beware of calling for abolitions and restrictions on firearms. The Second Amendment and guns today, the First Amendment and your blog tomorrow.