Playing the Crazy Percentages

Aaron Alexis, Navy Yard killer

A crazy guy kills a bunch of people with a gun.  Sadly, this has become a regular occurrence in America today.  Almost as predictable is the cliched outrage from the media and politicians regarding gun control and our country's propensity for violence.  "America has too many guns" is the default response from most quarters as they trot out the endless parade of camera hogging senators and representatives to call, yet again, for more gun regulation.  It ain't that simple.

I'm no gun nut.  I don't hunt or target shoot but I do have a shotgun for home security.  I qualified during my couple of years of military service to fire the M-14 and M-16 rifles, a 50 caliber machine gun and the standard issue Army 45 caliber pistol.  I know what they can do and have no desire to keep any of those weapons handy.  I do understand that other people may think differently and am fine with them owning, with the exception of maybe the machine gun, those firearms.

What I am against is CRAZY people having guns.  Too many of them do and we need to stop it pronto.  Obviously background checks aren't doing the job of determining who is capable of handling a gun responsibly, so I suggest we revert to the option that kept us safe for years:  Lock the crazy bastards up!

Just do the math.  In the mid 1950's the United States had a population of approximately 150 million people; today we have more than twice that number.  If--and I think this is conservative--you believe that roughly one out of one-hundred people are capable of acts of extreme violence, then it stands to reason that many more Fort Hood and Washington Navy Yard situations will manifest themselves.

Paranoid schizophrenics and other mentally disturbed citizens need to be isolated from society for their own good and the safety of others.  Sometime in the 1970's our government decided that it was a horrible thing to confine the dangerously insane.  It was "a violation of their rights" and they should be able to move about freely in society.  Of course this idea is the very essence of insanity front and center on the national stage.  "They'll be fine as long as they take their medication" was the thinking, but for the insane to function somewhat normally in a semi-sane world  they MUST take their medication.  Most don't, and there's the rub.

In 1993 Bill Clinton's administration issued orders barring military personnel and civilian contractors from carrying personal firearms on any military installation--even officers.  The ruling specified that there needed to be "a credible and specific threat against personnel" before military members would be authorized to carry weapons for personal protection.  We all know what happened at Fort Hood and now at the Navy Yard.  Lunatics show up everywhere and, unlike the military, they have no restrictions or reservations about much of anything.  They are nuts, remember?  This policy is idiotic.

Guns?  Sure, they're bad when in the wrong hands.  Either we start locking up people who need a "check-up from the neck up", or we start letting our military and others in potentially dangerous occupations start packing.    Perhaps then there would be no need to "shelter in place".  A simple "Go ahead punk, make my day," would suffice.