psychiatric hysteria

What role did psychiatric prescription drugs play in the Sandy Hook shooting?  (And many other mass shootings.)

The gun-obsessed media are strangely and utterly uncurious -- no investigation, and no reporting.

The giant, gaping hole in Sandy Hook reporting


Hysterical emotion always trumps reason, common sense, and evidence, at least initially.

Fanatics and axe-grinders of every variety know factual analysis and clear thinking are their primary enemy, so they always use the heat of the moment to try to get their bad ideas rushed into law:

5 Facts About Guns, Schools, & Violence


One proposal I could support would require all firearm transfers to be made through someone who holds a Federal Firearms License (FFL) -- a licensed dealer.  That would make private transfers (purchase, gift, or inheritance) subject to approval through the existing federal background check system; that is not required now in most states for private transfers.

That change in the law would tidy up an existing disparity that's hard to justify, and it would make some folks feel more comfortable, but it would be very unlikely to accomplish anything else. Colorado theater shooter James Holmes passed the background checks and bought his guns legally from licensed dealers; the guns used by the Sandy Hook shooter were also purchased from licensed dealers following background checks of the buyer, the shooter's mother.

Criminals steal their guns or buy them on the street, so none of this matters for how they acquire and use guns. But criminals do not perpetrate mass shootings of innocents -- lunatics do that. So, really, the problem is (a) how to identify a lunatic so he can't get a gun in the first place, or, (b) if he's identified himself by launching a shooting rampage, how to quickly put him down. There is no (c).

Byron