'Bang' to the Nth

There are places on Earth where violent men with guns are a regular fact of life. We like to think that 'those people' in 'those places' hold a lesser value for life than we, more enlightened folk do. But in all the great gun range that is our ballistic world,  one land stands head and shoulders above the rest for the regularity of banal killings executed with a firearm  - and the reticence of the governments or legislatures to put any meaningful  restrictions on the right to own a firearm 'guaranteed' under the national constitution - that land is the United States of America

a jaded, biased perspective from the ax-grinders at the Intercept


And so it was only with mild shock and a little dismay that the World learned that America had self-inflicted another 'national tragedy'- as opposed to say another attack by those who hate freedom - that would have been really serious. As it is there are some roads closed on the Vegas Strip, windows busted in a tourist hotel and the next audience taking in some live 'ennertainment' will be doing so with an ear cocked for a volley of automatic rifle fire.

The undertakers re still busily packing corpses for FedEx shipment and the hospitals are only starting to tote-up the costs to be passed on to insurers or, worse, sent to home addresses. As in most of its other tragedies America is 'go funding me'  dollars at the victims. The 'News' networks are beating the story to death and even if they don't really understand what happened, most Americans aren't thinking it had as much to do the 'the beauty of our weapons' as much as the mentality of a trigger-man, who fired into a crowd so far away he could only imagine the effect of his shots. Although he did have 'optics' on at least one of his weapons - he might have seen,  but he probably didn't hear.

He wasn't long for this world either - being deceased himself by the time - within minutes that it took for the swat squad, alerted by a 'fire alarm' set off by the battlefield barrage,  to come through the wall. Strange that the picture of the dead man's body - making an assumption he, somehow, made his head something to be kept from the public -  had something that looked very much like another supine person's foot  beside his leg.  What was up with that?

This past week another attack was thwarted. Actually it wasn't an attack. It probably wasn't thwarted either.  It wasn't even noticed.

The Airport bomber




But the real problem with America and its guns is:

Maybe to get some attention, or maybe just because he was  'mad' or 'nuts',  another shooter cut loose in two schools in Chicago killing 2 and wounding  2 others.   And somebody went wack-o in Maryland an killed thee people - one in a nearby state.

The beauty of it is that,  three weeks later,  it's like nothing happened.