Lock, Stock
I think this may be the last time I comment on these sorts of news articles. Instead I'll just post them here, and let people read them or not as they choose.

UNC student body president found fatally shot

Several leads, no arrests in Auburn slaying

So here's another problem. Most gun owners say that people should have the right to defend themselves, but admit that certain people should not be able to buy guns. What happens, then, when those people start becoming the victims of gun violence?

Don't take this as a challenge to make guns available to everyone.

I had a professor once back at Virginia Tech (I've written of him before, actually) who had one leg and no arms--neither guns nor hands, as it were. How was he supposed to defend himself had the shooter walked in to his classroom?

I anticipate that someone will say, "Well, he wouldn't have been able to defend himself against a knife, either, or a baseball bat." That's true. But knives and baseball bats have alternative uses, as I've discussed previously.

I'm a bit behind on my blogging, but an article kle posted recently caught my attention. Basically, it's really easy to break into gun stores and steal things, and making guns hard to get establishes a black market. It's the same thing you see with drugs: because they're illegal, prices go up, and it becomes profitable to do things in a shady way.

Did you know that it's really hard to grow hemp in America? Hemp products are expensive because in order to grow it, farmers have to hire a certain number of armed guards per acre, or meet some kind of alternative security requirement. We import most of our hemp.

Hemp. It's not even marijuana. You would have to smoke a blunt the size of a telephone pole in order to get high off the stuff, and even then you'd probably just end up with a headache.

If we impose such strict regulations on hemp farming, why don't we have similar requirements for authorized gun sales? Marijuana doesn't even kill anyone (nor does hemp, unless maybe you get really itchy from wearing it; which puts it on approximately the same level as sheep and alpacas, IMHO).

So here's my proposed first step: crack down on gun theft. Not the thieves, no--the stores that have realized insurance will cover just about any loss. If we want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, background checks are not the only thing we need. Don't just close the gun show loophole, close the gun theft loophole. Gun stores won't go away--they make enough money that it won't matter.

(As a side note: School shooters don't seem like the stealing guns types. Nor do they seem like the bargaining for a gun in a back alley types, either. Background checks, background checks, background checks.)