Chappie Says Mass Murderers OVERWHELMINGLY Were Not Criminals Until They Started Shooting People...

Chappie shakes his head every time he hears the little NRA wind-up puppets reciting the old saw that once the gun laws have taken away all "our" guns, only the criminals will have guns.  Or was it "outlaws"? "Outlaw" is an absurd word like "warrior" favored by absurd people who preen themselves in a comic book version of reality. Such inane words ALWAYS follow every mass shooting in our country because these slaughters are, sadly, terribly reassuring to some people.

     REALLY?

What is actually the most common cause of a fatal firearms accident?

For adults, the most common fatal accident is caused by a falling gun that discharges; most commonly an exposed hammer firearm with no hammer block.

 

OOOoops.

 

However, at the moment, my focus is narrow. It mimics the mental range of the gun lovers: simple words for simple souls. So, gun lovers out there, tell me if I get it right: when the guns of all the good people have been taken away, only bad people will have guns, right? Good or bad, law abiding or criminal?

It dawned on me a long time ago that I have never heard of a single mass murder perpetrated by a criminal. That's right. All the massacres I have ever heard of were carried out by people who would have been identified (up to the moment they climbed a tower or walked into the post office, the McDonald's, the elementary school and opened fire) as law-abiding (if not necessarily admired) and sometimes well-liked, normal people?  That's right: normal. You know: postal workers, physicists, college and high school students, junior high school students, international students, Army doctors, nurses, lots of unemployed people and people with children?  Forget the airline pilots: they have a weapon WAY better than any gun around... There are very few women and few people of colors other than white. No robbers, burglars, forgers, drug pushers, kiddie pornographers, pimps or corporate executives. That's all. That's my point. No need to read further.

       Charles Joseph Whitman ( U. S. Marine, Eagle Scout)  

                                                              

A criminal means someone convicted of a crime, a convicted felon, someone associated by society as engaged in crime of some sort (eg. "white-collar criminal".) Though a few of the shooters have had past encounters with the legal system, I have yet to come across one who was obviously and by conviction, a criminal. It may be that criminals of the common type are not interested in murdering large numbers of strangers. They have better things to do.

The murderers BECAME criminals by the very act of abusing their (usually) legal possession of arsenals of weapons. Obviously no one knew they were going to BECOME criminals with a single act of cruelty, cowardly in the sense that they do avoid armed people and tend to kill themselves in cowardly terror when the police, dumbfounded and usually inept, arrive. Their families and friends usually proclaim themselves to have been taken aback by events. I believe most of them. These killers are few and far between, and we are seldom expecting them. We are NEVER prepared.

The fact is that anyone who owns a firearm is a POTENTIAL criminal (as is anyone who does not own a firearm.)  There's no indication that possessing firearms inclines one more to become a criminal. But when the gun owner goes criminal, the consequences for the rest of us are out-sized. We see, routinely now, how different the destruction is when it comes from the firearms owner.  Keep in mind the thousands of suicides who use their own or their family members' firearms to destroy themselves every year. Thank Heaven for small favors. Alas, too many of them choose to settle accounts with those they dislike before blowing out their own brains. Or, finding themselves unable to settle their own hash, force policemen to do it.

Will I become a criminal someday?  Who knows?  However, my non-ownership of any firearms means that I will have to go to much greater lengths if I want to loose Hell on my neighbors. My 

wrist-rocket© slingshot does make me a minor force to be reckoned with, but I wouldn't be able to turn the slingshot on myself and take the coward's way out.

Fifteen years ago I testified as a prosecution witness in a capital triple murder case in Alameda County, CA Superior Court. During cross examination, the defense attorney asked me if I owned any firearms. I replied that I did not. He then asked me why I owned no firearms. I only had a second to consider my reply, but it was easy: because, I said, I'm afraid I might shoot someone.  The judge had to use his gavel to quell the laughter in the court. But even he was smiling. Is that really so funny?