almost, but not quite, crazy enough

It is starting to play over and over again, like a broken record.

Okay, most of you have probably never had a turntable and spent much time listening to vinyl records whose primary flaw was that a scratch or a bit of dirt caused the styli to skip and repeat the same passage time and time again.  The particular thing I am starting to feel we are hearing over and over again is that someone took a gun, went into his workplace and killed a number of people for no good reason.

We are now starting to hear of the background of the shooter and the picture coming into focus is of a guy with a series of warning signs that weren’t quite alarming enough for someone to prevent this from happening.

He was arrested three times but not convicted of anything, so he had no criminal record.  I can understand that part:  innocent until proven guilty.

The one that concerns me, though, is that he told police that he was hearing voices and that he thought someone was using a microwave machine on him.  He also told police that he had no history of mental illness.  I have a theory about people who are hearing voices in their heads and my theory is that they are crazy.

The one plus I see in this whole thing is that he tried to buy an assault rifle and was not able to because of a waiting period for a background check.  However, he was able to buy a riot gun, instead.  Although he was able to slaughter enough people with the riot gun and another gun he was able to take away from a guard at the crime scene, I can imagine how much more carnage this loony would have been able to produce with an AR-15.  Chalk up at least a small victory for gun control laws.

How many more times will maniac go into a school, a commercial place of business or a workplace and open fire?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I am going to answer.  It is going to happen again, and again.  Unfortunately this time some people knew in advance that the dude was crazy, but, apparently just not crazy enough for anyone to detain him.

The interesting thing about the particular workplace where this happened is that there were armed security people on site, but even that was not enough to prevent the killing.

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says that the answer to school shootings is to put armed guards at all schools and arm the teachers.  I am thinking that the incident in Washington, DC shows that armed guards are not necessarily the solution. 

To me, armed guards and arming teachers sounds crazy.

Apparently, to some, it must not sound crazy enough.