a lone gunman

there is an emotional (and political) undercurrent that saps the rigor out of any intellectual discussion of gun control in the USA. what's worse is that analysis is often inconclusive not just because of the overwhelmingly complex nature of issue but also as a result of the abuse of data (cherry-picking for t-stats), and the flaws and bias inherent in the models used to analyze the data. [relevant plug: some interesting legal empirical research at Stanford Law School. disclaimer: yes my name is somewhere on there but my personal opinions, if any, probably would have drowned in the sea of statistical methods.]

here i mull around a couple thoughts about gun control as it might be related to one particular type of gun violence.

there is a shooting massacre that evokes emotional outrage on a national scale. naturally there are calls for sweeping reform. in spirit this is justified but in reality it is lacking in tenability. mind you, the opposition's calls to resistance of reform goes a step further from "lacking in tenability"and in fact sometimes loiters somewhere in a region of "ridiculousness."

how do we prevent a lone gunman from carrying out a massacre? with varying profiles for such perpetrators it will be difficult to identify and constrain all of them. there are already millions of guns floating around that can be stolen or bought in back alleys if someone is determined enough to source them. the average joe might be discouraged from jumping through hoops to acquire a weapon, but the average deranged school shooter won't be as deterred. if the illegal gun angle was closed off at the same time (through a massive crackdown and harsher possession penalties) perhaps there would be more merit in the idea of strengthening current legal restrictions regarding the general availability of guns.

further to availability of guns is that of ammunition. let's face it, the more bullets there are in a clip the more people a deranged gunman can kill in a short amount of time. when i did pistol training the coach restricted us to five bullets in the clip at any given time to reduce the likelihood or extent of any gun mishaps on the range. that logic seems fair and can be extrapolated in my opinion. to sensationalize a bit here: you wouldn't make more C4 accessible to a community in which lurks a potential suicide bomber so why would you have rambo belts and banana clips available with deranged suicide shooters feening for a glorious exit? because guns are protected in the constitution but not bombs? please.

and what about the actual crazy people. how do we stop them? are current procedures for acquiring guns thorough enough to preclude those with mental dysfunction from arming up? i don't know. even if the law was thorough enough the enforcement and monitoring capabilities are probably shoddy. it seems to me that the vetting time and background checks are quite often insubstantial. perhaps the sale and flow of guns needs to be (virtually? electronically? physically?) centralized and controlled at a government level, if it's not already. we have the technology to do that... political will is another question.