Gotta Wonder...

Ever since the shooting in Vegas, last year, any time a mass-shooting makes the news and I see various people screaming "something needs to be done", I can't help but wonder, "was the shooter's the real intent to prove that there's really nothing you can do to prevent mass shootings":

• Background investigations? Passed them.
• Use of aftermarket stuff to increase rate of fire on otherwise non-cyclic weapons? Yup.
• Using a cache of pre-loaded weapons to obviate the question of limiting magazine-sizes? Yup
• Using a cache of pre-loaded weapons to overcome the types of heating problems you encounter when you make a civilian-grade weapon operate at near-
• military fire-rates? Yup.
• Inclusion of weapons in the cache that wouldn't have been covered by a ban of weapons that *resemble* military-grade weapons? Yup.

The only real thing he "missed" - at least as far as what's made it to news outlets - was including 3D printed weapons, magazines or bump-stocks. ...He also missed out on using homemade bullets. Basically, stuff that's fairly trivially done and no amount of regulation is *ever* going to prevent (at least, not in the case of an adequately-determined malefactors). Stuff that's really only going to get easier to do as technology advances.

I mean, sure, you could try to wholly ban guns, but how well have bans on alcohol and drugs worked out over the years. And, really, that's part of the irony of the "do something" crowd: many of the same people that say "legalize drugs because prohibition just doesn't work" are among the throngs that think that either outright banning all guns or just the "particularly awful" ones will somehow magically work where previous prohibitions have failed.

Am I saying it won't cut down on the number of incidents? No. It would probably greatly cut down on the number of newsworthy incidents. Problem is, it would probably also make it so that when incidents do happen, they're far more likely to be Vegas-style ...or, come by other forms of mayhem (Boston 2013, anyone?).