Replies to the WSJ Question of the day... part II

* Jim Gallagher wrote:

What could have been handled differently in his case, and how can gun laws be modified to prevent such tragedies? The short answer is nothing.
As much as we would like to prevent this and other mayhem, there is simply no law that can prevent this kind of tragedy. It seems lots of ink has been used to try and come up with a “solution” but the key should always be to first identify the “problem”. The shooter’s mental state, the gun he used, the magazine he used, the comments of conservatives prior to the shooting, even the use of a “targeting” ad for political rivals have all been called into the debate. Most of these issues had nothing to do with what happened and any attempt at finding a “law” that would prevent it would be extremely foolish.

Exactly how are you going to remove a person from society that might do something bad? How are you going to remove from society 300,000,000 firearms? How are you going to remove from society 15,000,000 high capacity magazines? How are you going to control the political speech of those that rant about “targeting” opponents? The more important question is would you prefer to life in a society that did any of these things?

As has been mentioned already, the only way this was going to be resolved with less bloodshed would have been if one of the bystanders had been armed. How would this have been any worse had Joe Zamudio been standing in the crowd rather than inside the store when the shooting started? My belief is fewer people would have been wounded or killed.

The fact will always remain that bad things happen. We hope they don’t but most of us don’t rely on hope alone. We try to be prepared for the event we hope never happens. Car accidents, fires, drowning, electrical explosions, poisonings, heat attacks, happen every day and no law will prevent them but having a fire extinguisher handy and knowing how to use it doesn’t seem out of place. Some of us know first aid and CPR and some of us know how and when to use a gun.

You can’t be prepared for everything all the time but you also can’t depend on someone else to keep you safe all the time either.