What for?
What difference would it make if they were terrorists?
There's a mass shooting every day in our country and an average of a hundred more separate shootings. People bleed to death by the many dozens every day from gun violence.
Granted, I've never seen someone bleed to death from a bullet wound and just the thought of it makes me sick, and granted, presidential candidate Ben Carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon who has seen people - children- bleed to death from bullet wounds said he "never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away" (wretched grammar, by the by), still, my point is that when people are bleeding to death in public places in these numbers isn't it kind of a moot point whether the bullets come from semi-automatic weapons fired by terrorists or non-terrorists?
My friend Sharon posted this on her Facebook page:
According to the December 2, 2015 New York Times, this past Black Friday so many Americans bought guns that the FBI was processing about two firearm background checks per second. The agency ran a record 185,345 checks on people buying guns last Friday.
So what do you think the chances are that someone among the185,345 is going to shoot someone else with the gun they bought? I'd guess close to 100%. You know why? Because someone doesn't buy something with the idea that they'll never use it. Because if you buy something then never use it you've wasted your money, right? A gun (all right, with the exception of a game-hunting gun) has no other purpose than to put a bullet into another human being. So if you've bought a gun you're going to feel like you need to use it some day and what else are you going to use it for?
Think of it. 185,000 people. In one day. What are the chances?
And yet a mass shooting a day, 30,638 dead a year, doesn't scare us a nanofraction as much as the thought that one of these mass shooting might someday be the work of an Islamic terrorist.
Because we see death from a gun in the hands of ISIS as an assault on our American way of life.
On the other hand death from a gun in the hands of a fellow American is, sadly, is an affirmation of the American way of life.
1. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-treats-san-bernardino-attack-as-possible-terrorism-case/ar-AAfYDHC?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=UP97DHP
2..http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/melanie-hunter/ben-carson-i-never-saw-body-bullet-holes-was-more-devastating-taking-away-2nd
3..http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/us/black-friday-gun-sales-soared-fbi-data-shows.html?emc=eta1&_r=0