You don't buy a shiny muscle car that can go 120 in seconds to only park it and stare at it or only go 30 everywhere. You really want to feel that acceleration every now and then. You want to hear and feel that rumble.
I know a guy in his 70s that has repeatedly bragged about carrying concealed.
He also has expressed an underlying desire - almost a need - to use it. Against a human.
If only he could find himself in ANY situation where it might tenuously justify him shooting a person.
Hell, his outrage at a Walmart store where his wife was asked to show her bag and receipt as they were about to leave the store!
If only he had it with him at that time... His words, not mine.
Or how about his anger at anyone questioning the shooting to Trevon Martin!! He still thinks it was justified.
Yes, he is an ass.
But he is an ass with a gun.
And he wants to use it so badly.
Now picture a teenager or young male adult. They go out and get their hands on a nice new AR-15. You think they don't want to use it? You don't think their adrenaline rush at the thought isn't kicking in?
You don't give easy access to such weaponry to the millions and expect not a single person to use it. Hello! Talk about statistical abberations.
That reasoning is insane. And the blood stained statistics prove it.
The mental health problem is not with the shooters, the few out of the millions. It is with the roughly half of the legislators refusing to accept these truths and the history proving it. Over 3,500 mass shootings* over the last 10 years. The GOP solutions: nothing sane, just a retrenchment and digging in.
The mental health problem lies within the GOP that has refused to do anything, hiding behind a few lines written over 200 years ago, treating those lines as more sacred then the bible they supposedly worship. Some might want to recall one of those 10 suggestions, “Thou shalt not kill”, and try to avoid being complicit.
* Defined as where there are four or more wounded or dead