On March 9th, Michael McLendon shot and killed ten people before killing himself. Among the deceased were family members and random strangers. He used two assault rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. All signs indicate McLendon bought his guns legally. He reportedly fired more than 200 rounds.
On March 21st, Lovelle Mixon shot and killed four police officers in Oakland, Calif., after a traffic stop. Nixon was armed with an assault rifle. Mixon was on parole (and apparently had a warrant out for his arrest for other charges).
March 29th -- Devan Kalathat shot and killed his two children, three other relatives and himself. He used two .45-caliber pistols purchased at local gun stores. He shot his wife multiple times, as well -- she survived.
Also on March 29th, Robert Stewart shot and killed seven patients at a nursing home and a nurse. He used a hunting rifle and a shotgun.
On April 3rd, Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at an immigrant service center. He obtained his guns legally. He used 9 mm and .45-caliber pistols.
The next day, April 4th, Richard Poplawski -- who thought President Obama was going to take away his guns -- shot and killed three police officers. He used an AK-47 assault rifle.
Also on April 4th, James Harrison shot and killed his five children.
On April 18th, Christopher Wood shot and killed his three children and his wife. A handgun and a shotgun were found at the scene.
On April 25th, Joshua Cartwright took away his wife's 9 mm pistol (which she was attempting to use to defend herself from him) and shot and killed two police officers with it. His wife said he believed the United States government was conspiring against him, and he was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president.
That's 54 people, and April isn't over, yet. I didn't count the lives of the shooters who either killed themselves or were shot by the police, because I just don't see them as victims. Their deaths are more accurately described as the end result of their criminal behavior. And these shooters were criminals once they pulled the trigger the first time. With the exception of Mixon, none of the shooters had any sort of remarkable criminal record. Apparently all, save Mixon and Cartwright, obtained their weaponry legally. This is an important point, as the gun lobby is constantly touting how law-abiding citizens should be entitled to arm themselves to the hilt: these shooters were law-abiding citizens up to the moment in time when they started shooting.
The NRA has been notably silent about the last month and half's worth of massacres (a search of "jiverly" returns zero hits on nra.org).
The typical NRA arguments fall flat here. One of their favorites is, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that, with the exception of Lovelle Mixon and Joshua Cartwright, all of the folks above did obtain their guns legally (we don't know if those two could've legally bought and possessed firearms). That is, they just wandered down to the local store and picked up a few high-powered firearms simply because they could. If the guns were outlawed, these would-be murderers wouldn't have been able to buy their weapons with the same amount of effort involved with buying a pair of running shoes. Instead, they would have been forced to find and establish connections in the criminal underground and then pay the highly inflated cost for the illicit firearms. The roadblocks inherent in navigating the black market would deter all but the most conniving and determined killers. They would shut down the opportunists and those acting solely on an emotional high. It wouldn't save all 54 victims, to be sure ... but it would save some of them. Instead, otherwise law-abiding citizens were able to obtain the firearms, and then use them for their inaugural acts of crime. Does it really matter to the families of the deceased that they were killed by someone who, heretofore, had been a law-abiding citizen? Of course not. By making the guns easily accessible, all society did was facilitate their entry into the criminal world.
The perspective of the garden-variety NRA member is tragically flawed. They envision two basic gun-related scenarios. The first is that "only people like me" are allowed to buy firearms. The second is "if I have a gun, I will be able to defend myself" and the corollary of "if people have guns, that will deter crime."
The first scenario typically gets voiced in strange gun-lobby arguments about "enforcing the gun laws on the books" to keep the guns out of the hands of shadowy criminals. Unfortunately, this view is exceedingly myopic on a couple of levels. The first is that people are widely varied and have vastly different desires, dislikes, drives and phobias. You just don't know the motivation of any given individual who buys an assault rifle. Even if they don't have a criminal record, it doesn't mean they don't have criminal intent or propensities -- it just means they haven't committed their first crime (and got caught doing it). The "laws on the books" simply do nothing to prevent someone like James Harrison from buying a gun and then using to kill his family. The second level of lunacy is firearms are sold every day at gun shows around this country without so much as a background check. In other words, adherence to the "laws on the books" is purely voluntary on the part of the purchasers at these events, and these purchasers are the ones with all the incentive to cover up any illegal plans they may have for their firearms. For the sellers, profit is the singular motive, and since our laws don't hold them liable and since we don't require background checks, sellers are singularly disinclined to make any sort of consistent, principled determination of whom to sell firearms to. The NRA inexplicably opposes background checks at gun shows, fatally undercutting the whole "gun owners like me" argument, because without the background checks we have absolutely no idea who these gun purchasers are or what they "are like." If anything, the NRA's position proves the organization actively subverts attempts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
The second scenario is the "if the victim had a gun, he (or someone else) would still be alive." There are several problems with this assertion, and the main arguments are things like we want to avoid shoot-outs, innocent bystanders may get hit, assailants may take the gun away and use it themselves, and so on. The more obvious (but less frequently made) point is that in the United States, we already have extensive gun ownership and possession rights and those rights have not stemmed crime, nor have they resulted in successful thwarting of criminal activity. Think about it -- if someone defended themselves against an attacker by drawing their personal firearm, the NRA would be telling that story from coast to coast. One would assume the NRA would have a catalog of such valiant uses of personal firearms on their website to peruse, because there would simply be no better publicity for firearms than such examples. But what do we hear from the NRA? Nothing but starry-eyed hypotheticals about the way things could turn out or how a particular tragedy could have happened differently. The right to arm oneself did absolutely nothing to help any of the 54 victims mentioned above. In fact, the police officers who were killed <span style="font-style: italic;">were </span>armed. Moreover, Cartwright's wife's gun was taken from her and used to murder two police officers. The unfortunate reality for the gun lobby is that loose gun laws have done nothing to stem criminal activity. Instead, in the cases cited above, the loose laws actually <span style="font-style: italic;">facilitated </span>the crimes.
If there is no consistent record (or any record at all) of people successfully defending themselves or others with their firearms, what really is the point of facilitating unchecked firearm possession? Is it because people enjoy shooting? Or is it the sense of comfort they get from having a gun? If either of those were the point, then there would be no argument against such "encroachments" on the right to bear arms such as registering guns or requiring licenses to own the firearms or conducting background checks at gun shows. After all, there hasn't been any sort of hue and cry over the requirement to obtain concealed-carry permits. No, the real opposition to laws restricting the types of guns available, requiring background checks at gun shows and requiring registration of firearms comes from delusional wet dreams of fighting off the government from one's front porch a la the Branch Davidians. Where does this irrational notion of the government trying to take over every household in the country come from? Is it a result of watching too much Red Dawn? I mean, really -- what would the government gain? And why would anyone undertake such an effort? Can you imagine what sort of monumental undertaking it would be to shuffle the entire population off to prison camps? And what would make anyone think the government would even be capable of pulling off such a massive undertaking (hell, it's a massive undertaking just to <span style="font-style: italic;">count </span>the number of people we have once every ten years)? It would be exceedingly expensive, extremely complex, highly controversial (to put it lightly) and insanely manpower-intensive. It would be ... impossible. To think otherwise would require a complete dissociation with reality. To put it simply, the people who harbor fantasies of having shoot-outs in their cul de sacs with national armed forces seeking to enslave or brainwash the entire population are precisely the type of irrational lunatics we should be keeping guns from.
This country needs sensible gun laws to prevent at least some of the annual slaughter as well as to facilitate investigation of murders (why wouldn't you want to know where the killer got his gun, unless you're covering for unscrupulous gun dealers?). While the NRA platitude of "guns don't kill people" has a base appeal, the organization fails to deal with the obvious point that people who have ready access to powerful firearms do kill people. Lots of them. At an increasingly disturbing rate.