THE POLICE PROBLEM

I just wrote this in response to another post, but it applies here, so please forgive me for the cut & paste:

This is an important subject that doesn't get ANY discussion. The type of gun makes a HUGE difference in these cases.

Military assault rifles aren't much different than a standard hunting rifle, like a Ruger. And yet, they are overwhelmingly the choice of most mass shooters. When was the last time you heard of a shooter using a standard hunting rifle?

The reason is psychological. Nobody would dispute that anyone who has committed to a mass shooting is psychologically compromised, and so their warped psychology has to be applied to everything they do, especially their choice of weapon.

The overall objective of any mass shooter is to show the world that they are someone powerful who should be taken seriously. They feel weak and victimized, and it's time to turn the tables. They want their victims to feel fear, and shame, and humiliation as they cower at the end of their gun, and to that end, they need a big scary black weapon to impress not only his victims, but himself. That gun provides the psychological motivation to carry out their mission. Other weapons may be scary, and equally lethal, but they don't have nearly the same psychological effect on either the victims or the shooter.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if gun manufacturers recognize this, and actually design guns to appeal to this particular psychological profile. I expect it. After all, whenever there is a school massacre, gun sales for this type of weapon go up. School shootings are among their best marketing.

It wouldn't be the first time corporations have done something that evil. Tobacco manufacturers covered up their own studies confirming tobacco addiction and cancer, and marketed against it for years, even as they manipulated their formulas to be more addictive, addict people faster, and make it harder to quit. Oil companies knew about Climate Change from their own studies years before it became widely known, and still deny it to this day. Evil companies do shit like that routinely, and it's hard to imagine a more evil industry than arms manufacturing.

So we can ban assault weapons, without banning hunting rifles with the same lethal potential, because standard hunting rifles aren't designed to attract and inflame the most psychologically broken individuals in our society.

And BTW, just because the VTech killer used handguns, does not negate the truth about MOST mass shooters using military style weapons. It's still a fact in most massacres.