Washington Post investigative reporter James Grimaldi, on Arizona’s lax gun laws: “Essentially, there is very little obstacle to purchasing a weapon in the state of Arizona. There are laws that require you, federally, to be at least 21 years old to purchase a handgun. But basically state law permits anyone 21 and older to own a firearm and also, to carry it concealed in the state. That’s different than many other states, many of which have stricter gun laws.”
It’s about gun laws, is it? Huh. That’s curious.
Because, somehow, despite the lax gun laws, the non-insane people in Arizona generally resist the urge to kill other people. While the actual insane people would just ignore the laws anyway.
Because, you know, they are insane and they want to kill other people and so they tend to ignore silly laws and stuff.
See where this is going? Here, I’ll spell it out for you: when insane people do insane things, it’s not about choice of weapons, it’s about being insane.
But NPR, incurious as ever, goes straight to “guns are evil”, instead of exploring further the obvious story here: that Jared Loughner was clearly deranged.
NPR, the news outlet that Fox News bashers love to hold up to the heavens as a paragon of virtuous news judgment, shows yet again that when faced with a choice between building the narrative around facts and evidence and logic, vs. building it around reliable Left-ish platitudes, goes for the platitudes.
But Fox News is biased. OK. Right. Have some more Kool-Ade.
Listen, I hate to burst your bubble, gun nuts, but sometimes it’s just a matter of deranged people doing deranged things, and that means that gun laws would have zero impact on all of that. Because laws have limited impact on the behavior of insane people.
Is there something unclear here? I don’t really think so.
Of course, new facts in evidence could change this assessment, but as of right now, all the available evidence so far is that (a) he was a nut, and (b) he did something crazy and horrible because he was a nut. There is no reason to believe that different gun laws would change any of that, unless you like to blame guns for everything, including insanity.
