When Kurt Myers walked into the upstate New York barbershop and asked the owner "Do you remember me?" no one expected him to pull out a shotgun and go on a murder spree, but he did. Myers, described by neighbors as a loner, a quiet little man who barely spoke to anyone, killed four people before being shot.
He also killed a police dog sent in to find him in a building where he had holed up.
Taking the advice of the Obama administration, let's not let this tragedy go to waste.
Expressions of shock, horror, sympathy and sorrow for the victims and their families should go without saying.
But what shouldn't go without saying is that Myers used a shotgun. Not an AR-15, not a gun with a high capacity magazine, not a semi-automatic handgun, but a shotgun, virtually the same technology as a musket.
Shotguns typically have no rifling in the barrel. They rarely hold more than five to eight shells. Some can be fired without re-cocking, but most require some action to load them again after having been shot once.
They have no long range capability, are very common, designed for the most part as hunting weapons and though there are some limited military applications, they are not military type weapons.
But they are deadly, as are hammers, clubs, knives, gasoline, electricity, water, anti-freeze and any number of other things, only when used by a person intentionally or recklessly to kill someone else.
So what is the common denominator in the use of any firearm, or any of these other things which makes them deadly? A human being.
And how do we control human beings? Maybe we need to consider the flaws that exist in certain types of people and begin a process to cleanse the earth of "defectives" so we can have a master race of people that pose no threat to other humans, what do you say? What's that? Someone has already tried that? And in order to get started on that process he first disarmed anybody he perceived as a threat to his plans?
Hmmmm..... I guess some people had forgotten that.
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