Reports are telling the public that the latest teenage school shooting rampage was not one that fits the usual profile of a shooter [“Second victim in Marysville-Pilchuck shooting dies as community grieves,” Local News, Oct. 26]. The Marysville-Pilchuck High School student was well-liked and popular. His life wasn’t falling apart, like so many others.
That “typical” shooter is a concept concocted by the National Rifle Association to deflect the issue away from guns and toward psychology. The NRA has been so successful that the issue has turned away from that of guns to that of background checks and psychological profiles, both of which the NRA fights against just as vociferously. So while the NRA fights against background checks (as it is now doing on Initiative 594 here in Washington), it has kept the nation focused on that issue.
The real issue is — and will continue to be — availability of guns. The more available guns are, the more they’ll be used. It’s that simple. Even a well-balanced person, whether a teenager or adult, having a bad day — or even a bad moment — can do irreparable harm if a gun is at his or her fingertips. While background checks may find more people (statistically) who are likely to go on a rampage, nobody can ever put a finger on specifically who will go nuts. The only way to reduce diabolical gun sprees to to reduce the number of guns available.
And that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, which clearly limits gun availability to those involved in a militia — a protective, state-run militia, not a hate-group-sponsored paramilitary group.
Bruce Barnbaum, Granite Falls