Another School Shooting: Is Rigorous Gun Regulation Even Possible?

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with a Colt AR-15. It is doubtful these weapons can be controlled unless the private market (as exemplified in Gun show sales) can also be regulated.

With the news of another school shooting, this time by a 12 year old using a semi-automatic weapon in Sparks, NV, attention once more turns to gun control. Make no mistake the damage in Sparks could have been much worse had a courageous math teacher, Michael Landsberry, not stepped in front of the young shooter, impeding him from firing on other classmates. According to one student interviewed by John Blackstone as reported yesterday morning on CBS Early Show, the shooter yelled: "You ruined my whole life!" - likely referring to a bad math grade.

Now, as reported this morning, the parents may have to accept responsibility for the kid getting the gun, and take the consequences for his actions.  But is it even reasonable? Perhaps, given it was their duty to ensure the weapon was secure. Once a weapon enters a home, the parents are the last line of security ensuring a kid doesn't get his mitts on the merchandise, load it up and go out with a chip on his shoulder to settle scores.

But outside of the home venue,  is rigorous gun control even possible? According to James B. Jacobs, writing in the January-February 2003 Legal Affairs ('Off Target', p. 18) all the regulations in the world  won't help unless we finally get smart about what is practical and what isn't. It's also clear that other nations (e.g. Canada) with high numbers of guns owned per capita don't act like we do. In Jacobs' words:

"it's clear that there is much more going on than unchecked access to guns. The United States has much more violent crime, with and without firearms, than any other Western democracies. America, it seems, has a disproportionate penchant for violence."

Why? One can surmise any number of reasons. My own, as given in 'The Elements of the Corporatocracy',  is the presence of pervasive free floating anger - even rage - endemic in so many citizens. This arises because of their powerlessness in the face of the power brokers, who play with their lives and basic security like a deranged kid might "play" with ants using a magnifying glass.  A guy is one week from collecting a pension from his company which would ensure long term security, and he's fired. Make sure if you do such a deed, you batten the hatches. The guy  dumped will not go gracefully or easily into that good night !  A working mother, meanwhile, has to leave her job to take care of her sick kid and is fired on her return. Another mom with an autistic child to care for is happy to get the news of her promotion, until she learns she will no longer be able to get the Medicaid care needed - the higher salary now disqualifies her! 

All of these disclose possible reasons for the endemic anger  in much of U.S. society, but let's be honest and admit the easy access to weapons makes going over the precipice to violent action easier. Why not in Canada which has more guns per capita? Because there are more social support safety nets in place to catch people who are cut off from their life lines. Canadians enjoy a truly single payer health insurance system as well as other social insurance protections that U.S. citizens don't. Hence, there's a higher threshold of pain that can be tolerated before they go whacko.

This is something to bear in mind, as the Neoliberal politicos ponder "entitlement" and other cuts in some "bipartisan grand bargain" to try to right the U.S. debt situation..

Anyway, back to Jacob's piece. He notes that the "practical effect of gun control is severely limited". For example, the regulatory system itself appears to defeat its own efforts. Purchases made through Federal Firearms Licensees are heavily regulated but purchase by private individuals, say at gun shows, are not. So long as occasional gun sellers don't declare themselves FFLs, there's no federal requirement they run background checks.  Jacobs compares this to "a house with six deadbolts locks and one open window."

Jacobs adds it ought to surprise no one that most criminals get their weapons through the secondary market, i.e. at gun shows. As he points out:

"If the law doesn't require background checks at gun shows, then it's at gun shows that criminals know they need to get their guns."

Hence, no gun regulation law that leaves out the private market can work.

The other practical problem, as Jacobs shows, is that even if a gun regulation "forbids" selling guns to certain categories - say illegal aliens, or mental patients - there's no way to ascertain a buyer falls into these prohibited categories.  "It serves only as political agitprop not as policy".

He adds that even after the Columbine massacre here in Colorado, the U.S. Congress refused to pass the "Gun Show Accountability Act", and there's no reason any new congress would do so even after Aurora, Newtown and other school shootings such as the one in Sparks.

What about a national handgun registry - say to cover weapons such as Glocks? Jacobs argues that this would "mean little unless nearly all of the 250 million guns currently in circulation were all listed with the government."

What about laws regulating assault weapons such as the AR-15 I am holding in the photo? Jacobs acknowledges states have passed laws mandating regulation of such rifles but "for reasons ranging from ideology to laziness these laws have been overwhelmingly ignored". He adds that even given such laws, "a black market would inevitably crop up where unregistered weapons would be peddled."

He adds that "unlike with cars - where drivers without license plates can easily be spotted by police- those who choose to carry an unregistered gun would likely go undetected until after they commit a crime."

As he further asks:  Even if we overcame the political, logistical and financial impediment to passing a practical and cogent law for the secondary gun market, would a new generation of criminals obtain unregistered handguns? And - would the gains in controlling guns be worth it?

Jacobs concludes that prohibition of civilian ownership of firearms "is not a feasible option".

But he does assert some things can still be done. These include:

- Ballistic fingerprinting: requiring manufacturers to test fire new guns and supply the government with samples of the bullets and shell casings.

- Restricting handgun sales to one handgun per buyer each month. ("Very few legitimate users would be inconvenienced by the limit")

- Imposing a defined waiting period, say from 48 to 72 hours. This would prevent a person in a murderous rage (say just after being canned 1 week from getting his pension) from running straight to a gun shop - buying a gun- to discharge his frustrations.

- The easiest solution (to strengthen firearms policy)  is to "provide severe punishment for every defendant who uses a gun to commit a crime." No serious interest groups would oppose tough treatment for gun offenders."

The one little problem with the last? It takes no account of the 'Stand Your Ground' laws such as in Florida, which allow a gun toter to blow away his opposition if he "feels threatened with deadly force".

One wonders what Jacobs would have thought of such laws, given Florida's only came into existence 5 years after his article. I believe if he'd been cognizant of them, he'd have argued they're a bad idea because of undermining the punishment aspect by applying too general conditions for use of deadly force. Think George Zimmerman and Tavon Martin.

With the Recent Mass Killings Let's Clear the Air on the Gun Ownership B.S.

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with an AR-15. Make no mistake these rifles are not for squirrel hunting!

"The idea that the 2nd amendment granted every man the right to keep and bear arms on his own is one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."- Chief Justice Warren Burger

In the wake of the recent mass shootings, at the D.C. Navy yard, and then in Chicago, 25 people killed in all, the NRA and its gun mavens are all hyper -reactive. Once more they're paranoid the "libtards" want to take their substitute cocks away from them, but the truth is we only seek regulation. So this attitude of the hyper-'any' gun Right needs to be addressed.

Once more I am not an anti-gun lib. I have owned and used rifles and fired off shotguns as well in target practice.  (Including in 1968 in New Orleans when testing the "jet effect" nonsense peddled by JFK conspiracy deniers). However, I've never owned anything automatic, with multicapacity clips!

Unlike the whacko contingent of gun owners, I don't believe the 2nd amendment gives people the "right" to own rocket propelled launchers, bazookas, .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns, or military assault type weapons - capable of mass slaughter. The Second Amendment authors - inhabiting a world where single load muskets were the rule - would have been flabbergasted to see the extent to which their amendment had been misconstrued today - such as by the NRA and their denizens. They'd have thrown up their hands and yelled: "Wait! We intended that amendment for state militias, which were the extent of military at the time, and then to only own the type of rifles used then.....the musket! WTF are you doing?"

The argument that the new high powered rifles - such as AR-15s, and Bushmaster .223s are entitled to be owned as a "right" is just plain bollocks. No, you can own a 30.06 as a right, because it's a legit rifle with which to go out hunting. You can own a .22 as a right, and it does a nice job of killing small game especially if you use hollow points.  But you don't need the other semi-automatic weapons, or AK 47s. Their main purpose is mass killing of enemies, such as one might face in Afghanistan - with the Taliban.  The same applies to rapid firing smaller arms, such as Glocks. (The type used by the Virginia Tech killer).

 Even  though I don't believe the 2nd justifies such powerful weapons, I do acknowledge our laws have been distorted over decades and realize that  - once the cow has escaped the barn- it is difficult if not impossible to get it back in. Thus, I am not for banning such guns, but properly regulating them. I believe no sane or sensible person can argue against such measures. These include regulating the use- say by demanding nationwide background checks as well as limiting  magazine capacity to a rational standard. In other words, IF you really are a hunter, you don't require an AK-47 or an UZI!  A true hunter, out for deer say, can get by very nicely with a good, old -fashioned Remington 30.06, the tried and true standard. If you need a weapon for protection, you do not need a Glock 9 or a Glock 19, you can get a .38 revolver and with enough shooting practice be just fine.

In other words, I am arguing for rational standards on gun ownership, not anything goes. I argue by similar analogy for rational pet ownership. No, you shouldn't  be able to own as many jaguars, anacondas, Burmese pythons, or tigers as your little heart desires! THAT is irrational, and moreover those WILD animals can't be contained properly in captivity. That is also why so many pythons (estimated at 30,000) have now made their home in the Florida Everglades, not to mention hundreds of monitor lizards, because pet owners couldn't control them once they grew too large, or too feisty. (I won't even go into the character in Colo. whose pet python ate him while he was sleeping with the snake still in his queen bed digesting him when the cops arrived.)

 In the same way, zealot gun crazies have upset rational gun ownership "ecology" and culture in this country by their extreme demands and desires. They make the rest of us appear also like crazies, because of their inordinate demands for weapons which do not fit any normal use for citizens.

What these gun nut Americans are really doing, or would be doing, is effectively placing higher gravitas on 2nd amendment rights than 4th amendment.  This is what causes me to scratch my head: Why so much zealotry in the name of the 2nd amendment, and so little for the 4th - even while NSA spooks are scooping up every thing in sight?


In a previous blog post I observed that intangible rights (such as enshrined in the 4th amendment)  don't carry the same import in the minds of a somnolent or detached populace as rights which have attached to them actual material implements, weapons (AR-15s, Glocks) . In other words, the very fact of a rifle  - say an AR-15 - being a physical object that can be physically possessed,  is what makes it real to the 2nd amendment rights defender. If it is physical, touchable and real then it CAN be taken away, hence Charlton Heston's famous zinger: "You'll have to pry this rifle from my cold, dead hands!"

But what about privacy,  the right at the core of the 4th amendment? To the average gun owner it sounds way too airy-fairy. "Privacy? Don't need it, ah got mah gun!"  The fourth's problem is that it is completely intangible. You don't really know whether or when it's being taken from you (like your gun), or not.  A gun seizure is therefore viewed as far more serious and substantial because it entails a physical taking away, removing the object from one's possession. Privacy, not so much!

 The problem for the gun nut culture is just this: by dissing or diminishing the 4th amendment in favor of the misinterpreted 2nd, they are actually making it easier for a future administration (say with continued lack of habeas corpus and a toughened 'continuity of government' clause in the Patriot Act)  to actually seize their guns....every one of them!  After all, the NSA spying already means the feds likely know exactly where these owners live and exactly how many arms they own, and the type. A simple Posse Comitatus perversion could send National Guardsmen and Army in every state barging into homes in the dead of night to seize them, and the gun nuts wouldn't know what hit them until too late. While they express much bravado this would never occur, they are fooling themselves.

Indeed, their reasoning skills leave them open for exploitation and yes, one day being led like sheep to the slaughter. Some of the codswallop I've beheld to defend their weapon ownership is positively bizarre. It demonstrates "logic" at about the third grade level. But again, that's also about the level of the NRA's PR.

One common argument, is: "Hey, it ain't the guns and taking 'em ain't gonna work. I got 45 big knives including Bowie knives! I can kill anyone with them!"

Yes, Sparky, but you miss the larger point: It's much, MUCH harder to mass- kill using knives. Much more difficult than opening up on a crowd with an AR-15 or Bushmaster .223 or Glock!  Maybe you will manage to kill, or seriously wound three - maybe four,  with one or more knives - but by then any bystanders will be all over you and any cops will shoot to kill. It takes TIME and much more effort to kill with a knife than with a semi-automatic rifle.

But let's not let facts get in the way.

Another tactic is deflection from the real cause. This was employed some months ago by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre who blamed the "violent video games" and that mentally unstable people who use them will be affected and besides they contribute to a culture of violence. He named several, including 'Grand Theft Auto'. I do agree these games are violent and hence may trigger aggressive impulses, but the fact that millions of people play them and aren't affected shows that Wayne's solution of banning or regulating them is as whacky as his "pseudo-cop" solution (i.e. placing thousands of hired guns in schools across the country to act as ersartz "police" and discourage would be shooters). One more fact: Japan has more violent video game addicts per capita than any other country but barely any homicides, especially by gun. Why?  The Japanese are a less violent people and they own fewer guns!

The lamest arguments entail attempts to turn the mass shootings against "libtards" and "registered Dems".  The misfits who resort to this tactic typically trot out singleton anecdotal examples of killers as  "registered democrats" -  but of course never provide the evidence to back it up (i.e. that the shooters really are "registered Democrats").  Even if it were so, it does not constitute proof that "Liberals are mass killers". Indeed, those who invoke this bunkum  commit the classical logical error of the fallacy of distribution, or arguing from the specific to the general.. An analogous case of such shoddy reasoning would be:

"Barbie was raped by Jack"

"Jack  happens to be a man"

"Therefore all men are rapists"

And, from the gun nuts:

 "The Aurora, Newton and D.C. Shipyard mass murderers were all  registered Democrats"

"Therefore, all registered Democrats are mass murderers"

Note the converse of the last statement, i.e. "all mass murderers are registered democrats" is equally fallacious, because a selective sample is employed  to argue to a general conclusion applicable to a whole class.

 What will it take to finally get our congress critters to pass legislation to regulate military -style weapons and staunch the mass killings? The other night, after watching the news of the D.C. ship yard killings, I suggested to Janice it would be something like a madmen barging into a hospital pediatrics section and shooting dozens of infants with an AK-47.  But my wife disagreed, asserting even that wouldn't change the sick gun culture and the NRA would have legislators quaking in their boots, pointing to the recent recalls (here in Colo.) of John Morse and Angela Giron.

If that is true, and it might well be, we truly are sick and .....well, fucked. We will continue to witness many much more slaughter, and no political will to halt it.   Until our legislators finally get some balls, as opposed to kowtowing to the NRA and kissing their butts, we can expect to see more tragedies like those in D.C. and Chicago. And that is a damned tragedy!

Deconstruction of a Psycho: James Holmes

On gathering more of the back story on James Holmes, the psycho who killed 12 people at an Aurora CO movie theater and wounded 58 others, we find these markers:

- He was socially aversive, pathologically shy – according to a lab partner in Colo: Holmes’s “disposition was a little off” and that he could be socially awkward, one of the quieter people in the lab. He "spent much of his time immersed in his computer”

- He had some ideations of grandiosity as after he graduated from UC Riverside with Honors but learned the only job he could get was at a McDonalds

- He was accepted  in the Fall of 2011 at a Univ. of Colorado campus (Anshutz, in Aurora) to do a Ph. D. in neuroscience.

- He dropped out in June because of reported “academic problems” (according to Jackie Brinkman, a spokesperson for the campus quoted in today’s NY Times)

- After dropping out, he purchased his weapons, and played violent video games in his apt.

- He adopted a rebellious persona which he called “the Joker” and had become this persona when he entered the Aurora theater to kill 12 and wound 58.

- His rigged apartment was designed to obliterate all traces of the persona he rejected.

I puzzled over this set of behaviors for some time, weighing whether the guy’s profile more fit in with a schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder. After some further rumination it clicked that here was a classic case of submerged personality disorder – so well explicated in the excellent book: ‘Psychotherapy of the Submerged Personality’ by Alexander Wolf and Irwin L. Kutash. As they observe, submergence is characterized by the development of two pseudo-egos in conflict with each other and the submergence or suppression of an intact ego called “the submerged ego”.

The “submerged ego” is the authentic one, which if allowed to come out would be consistent with the individual’s aspirations, goals and personality. It becomes submerged when a child’s behaviors and personality are greeted with tremendous hostility and rejection (as well as punishment) by a parent, usually the mother. The little one is then bereft of his moorings, parental love and acceptance until and unless he discharges the unwanted (by the parent) Self. Hence, to receive the desperately needed approval he must become an appendage of the parent, by introjecting her values, behaviors, priorities and even demeanor.

In the Wolf-Kutash anthology, Michael Lindenmann (p. 96, 'Identifying the Defensive Pseudo-Ego maneuvers in Psychotherapy') notes: "Throughout their lives these individuals will have been most consistently rewarded for what they know or for what they can do- for thinking and acting, but not much for feeling. They will have learned most to rely on their ability to reach intellectual or active solutions to their life problems with little consideration given to emotional needs or subjective reactions. Out of a profound fear of loss of connection with the mothering object, much attentive energy will have been focused on the wishes and reactions of others and away from oneself."  And (ibid.):

"As a consequence, these individuals may act as though they do not really know how to be IN life" (emphasis mine). "There will be difficulties with assertiveness, confrontation, or the ability to express such feeling as anger or criticism. ....for all in all, repressing the authentic ego and accommodating to the mothering object, these individuals have become quite accustomed to setting their own emotional reactions aside and dissociating from their own authentic needs."

Lindenmann goes on to observe (p. 97): that "with the authentic ego repressed, developmentally stymied and unavailable for rich and authentic experience, these individuals will often report feeling cheated by life".

This feeling of being "cheated" is a natural accompaniment of the individual's loss of psychic energy via introjecting his or her mother's paranoid, narcissistic or depressive demands. While he thereby forms a defensive, maternal pseudo-ego it comes by way of enormous psychological cost. Following this, the submerged personality must invest more energy into a second pseudo-ego whose purpose is to protect the submerged ego and oppose the maternal pseudo-ego. This oppositional pseudo-ego  is called "the rebellious pseudo-ego". The individual with a submerged personality then displays ongoing ambivalence between compliance with the mother (or other dominating parent) and rebellion against her.(Note: the rebellious pseudo-ego gives the illusion of finally having found real outlets for authentic aggression, emotion....but in reality it's a confection. The responses are nearly always out of proportion to the actual stimuli.)

Leaving home doesn’t necessarily liberate the personality from the control or domination of the introjected parental ego. Indeed, any authority – say a school administration or even a therapist thererin – may subsume this maternal ego in the submergent personality’s mind. Thus, I conjecture that Holmes, while in Colorado, perceived the university administration (and likely even his advisor) as coupled with the introjected ego. The “second pseudo ego” created to defend and protect his submerged ego was none other than “the Joker”.

Tragically, by the time Holmes’ protector ego (“Joker”) was released, it was out of control. Everyone then became identified with the introjected parental or authority ego. The warped perception of the defender ego then decided the only way to achieve liberation from the introjected “parent” was to eliminate all who were seen as in its way. In this case, all “normal”, i.e. non-submerged people. Those whose personalities had not been coerced into psychological lockdown and submergence by a dominating parent. An alternate possibility, perhaps more convincing, is that the retributional "Joker" persona felt outraged and murderously envious of those normal folk (say in socialized units present at the theater) who were not developmentally stymied and hence whose lives were available for rich and authentic experience.

Why would the Ph.D. level have been the one that finally triggered release of Holmes’ Joker? Good question! My belief is that Holmes, lacking an authentic personality, was unable to deal with the extraordinary research demands at the Ph.D. level which necessitate originality. I mean, even if the thesis advisor offers you a thesis subject, you still must have the ability to carry out an original theory! It’s not simply like piling up As and making “honors” at lower levels. No real originality is needed to make the "Dean's List", after all. Even brilliance, so-called, doesn't assure originality at a high research level! (Aside: we now know from a Denver 7 News report by Keli Rabon that Holmes failed a preliminary oral exam before pulling out of the neurosciences program at Colorado University. A day later he purchased his most lethal weapon, the Smith and Wesson MP15. )


The problem is that a submerged personality, because it is suppressed, will not be able to display the originality needed for ground-breaking research in the field. If it had a scintilla of originality potential, it wouldn’t be submerged and permit an introjected ego to occupy its psychological space! In Holmes’ submerged ego’s perceptions, he’d have been exposed as a fraud, cover blown. When it really counted, to do original research, he couldn’t cut the mustard. The interior or submerged ego was still hostage to parental demands and could find no way out.

We know from a recent survey (by the DSM-V background research group) that up to 26% of those over age 21 are described as “mentally ill” in this country. Even leaving out depression (10%) that leaves 16% or 1 in 6 with other serious disorders. Given there’s no way all of these millions can be locked up or effectively controlled (especially if they go off any meds), the only alternative is to find a way to regulate gun ownership via rigorous laws.  Then it becomes less likely any of the outright misfits (like Jared Loughner, Seung Hui-Cho or James Eagen Holmes)  will get hold of high capacity automatic weapons to effect mass murders!

Our two presidential candidates, in addition to calling for "prayers and condolences", need to do something even more effective: release their balls from the grip of the NRA gun lobby, so they can then USE those cojones to push for effective legislation to control automatic weapons and mega-capacity clips! Then maybe so many occasions for offering prayers and condolences wouldn't be necessary since our glorious leaders would be addressing the problem at its core....as opposed to offering symbolic pap which merely enables the cycle to continue!

Time to Reel in the U.S. A. Gun Culture Zealots

The horrific tragedy in Aurora, Colorado this morning, leaving at least 12 dead and 58 wounded, stands beyond belief in the annals of state mayhem. Hundreds of people throng joyously into an Aurora Century 16 cinema, to see the midnight premier of 'The Dark Night Rises' only to be greeted by gunfire 25 minutes into the film. The shooter, evidently armed with two large  (0.40 cal) Glock automatic handguns, and a Smith and Wesson MP15 assault rifle, mowed down fleeing theater goers at will, as blood spattered all over the cinema floor. Many of those who survived did so not by fleeing (because the shooter waited for victims to bolt to the exit), but by lying low or playing dead between the seats.

We have seen such scenes play out before, as with the April, 1999 Columbine massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, barely 20 miles down the highway from Aurora. In the wake of that tragedy in which 12 were killed and more than a dozen injured, there emerged a faint hope that once and for all the zealots of U.S. gun culture would be brought to heel. But it was a mirage. Quickly, the NRA called its main meeting in Denver, featuring spokesman Charlton Heston who gave his usual full-throated cry: "You can pry this gun from my cold, dead hands!"

Then there was the Virginia Tech massacre, and again a hope emerged to contain the zany zealots of gun culture, but nothing was done. The NRA lobby once more exercised its powerful influence on our lawmakers, but as usual they capitulated. It doesn't take a lot to capitulate, even a passive failure to veto an onerous piece of legislation that promotes gun insanity. Case in point, the 2009 credit card bill (which reined in interest rates and fees) but for which a "rider" amendment was attached by the Repugs allowing people to carry weapons into National Parks. By all rights this perfidy ought to have been forthwith vetoed by Obama, but it was signed into law. An opportunity to send a message to the insane gun zealots had passed, message not received. Bring whatever guns you want, into National Parks! We believe in "the Second Amendment"! Horse manure!

Given such wimpishness in facing the gun lobby and its defenders it's little wonder we stand out as having so many massacres, such as Columbine, Virginia Tech and now Aurora.  It is evident that we are a nation that treats gun ownership, and by that I mean any kind, as more important than the lives of citizens. This perhaps is no surprise. Of all the nations on Earth, ours is the most lax in providing protection for citizen information, privacy. No wonder then we yearly suffer from a plague of not only identify theft, but serious incursions into our information and files. We don't even see a problem with the NSA setting up a monster 2 million square foot spy -atorium in Utah to spy on everything from Twitter messages, to cell phone texts to ....you name it.  Hey, it's "national security'"! In our best interests! If we don't protect citizens at this basic level, why protect their life and limbs from insane gun- toting nuts? Bottom line: our politicos are more worried about "politics" and how it'll play in Peoria, or Pensacola...than the national welfare.

Then, no surprise at the spate of record -setting wacko gun legislation in individual states,  such as we beheld in Florida-  implementing a reckless law known as "Stand your ground". This nutso law basically confers the right of ultimate self protection (as in being judge, jury and executioner rolled into one)  if a person feels or senses that his life is threatened. On this basis, we then beheld George Zimmerman acting "pre-emptively" to neutralize a vague threat that had become entrenched in his sense perceptions - triggering the fear circuits in his amygdala.

Zimmerman encountered Trayvon Martin  (a young black kid in a hoodie) passing through his gated Sanford, FL neighborhood - and suddenly felt his life threatened. He insists Martin threatened to kill him by planting some blows on his head so he had to act, but then insists it was "God's plan" that he did so. (In an interview with Sean Hannity). Sorry, Georgie, but you don't get to invoke "God's plan " when you off somebody!

Now, think of laws like this all over the nation (we also have one in Colorado called "Make my Day" after the famous catch phrase in the first 'Dirty Harry' flick - where you can shoot and kill anyone entering or already inside your home if you believe he poses a threat to your life) and the inevitable results. Those include the perception that retribution is only a carry permit away.

My point is that the ease with which extremist gun culture is dignified by legislation, makes it feasible that gun use is legitimized in the public square. Add then one more ingredient: a wacko with grudges galore - maybe against his wife or girlfriend, maybe against a thesis advisor or boss, or perhaps against his peers....or even against life....and you have the formula for mass tragedy as beheld at Columbine, High School, at Virginia Tech and now at Aurora.

We still don't know what the Aurora shooter (James Holmes)  back story is - other than he was supposedly pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience (if you can believe it), but we know the Columbine killers  - Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold- had grievances saved up for two years against the entrenched "jock culture" at Columbine, and also against the students (mainly girls) who adored it, fawned over it. In their televised diary Harris and Kliebold frothed at the mouth at what they intended to do, and the vengeance they'd wreak against jocks and jock lovers. They were as good as their word.

The Virginia Tech killer, Seung -Hui Cho, who killed 32, had a similar laundry list of grievances against those who bullied him. Add to that a serious mental instability and purchasing a Glock 19 and Walther P22 with the ease of buying chocolate bars, and you had the formula for massacre. The refrain heard by the NRA puppets in the wake was the usual one: "Guns Don't Kill People! People Kill People!"  Yeah - nice try, but the part left out is that guns kill people more efficiently when used by people to kill other people.

If Harris, Kliebold or Cho had been limited to large knives, they'd never have wrought so MUCH carnage. Maybe five at most would have been killed before the perps were taken down. It was the availability of the automatic or semi-automatic weapons that conferred the massive kill numbers and kill -to-wounded ratio. Ditto in the case of the Century 16 slaughter.

And no, once more I am not an anti-gun lib. I have owned and used rifles and fired off shotguns as well in target practice. However, I've never owned anything automatic, with multicapacity clips!

I am not for banning all guns, but for regulating the use and magazine capacity to a rational standard. In other words, IF you really are a hunter, you don't require an AK-47 or an UZI!  A true hunter, out for deer say, can get by very nicely with a good, old -fashioned Remington 30.06, the tried and true standard. If you need a weapon for protection, you do not need a Glock 9 or a Glock 19, you can get a .38 revolver and with enough shooting practice be just fine.

In other words, I am arguing for rational standards on gun ownership, not anything goes. I argue by similar analogy for rational pet ownership. No, you ought not be able to own as many jaguars, anacondas, Burmese pythons, or tigers as your little heart desires! THAT is irrational, and moreover those WILD animals can't be contained properly in captivity. That is also why so many pythons (estimated at 30,000) have now made their home in the Florida Everglades, not to mention hundreds of monitor lizards, because pet owners couldn't control them once they grew too large, or too feisty. (I won't even go into the character in Colo. whose pet python ate him several years ago, while he was sleeping with the snake in his queen bed.)  Now, the "liberated" -by- owners pythons are upsetting the whole ecology of the glades.

In the same way, zealot gun crazies have upset rational gun ownership "ecology" and culture in this country by their extreme demands and desires. They make the rest of us appear also like crazies, because of their inordinate demands for weapons which do not fit any normal use for citizens.

Until our legislators finally get some balls, as opposed to kowtowing to the NRA and kissing their butts, we can expect to see more tragedies like today's here in Colorado. And that is a damned tragedy!