Nonsense about El Paso and Dayton

There is a lot of predictable nonsense going around after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. In the first place, the only ones to blame are the two  who did the shooting. The facts that  one of them did not like immigration and the other supported Elizabeth Warren are irrelevant in terms of responsibility for what happened, and attempts to claim otherwise are absurd. So are efforts to blame video games, the NRA, the decline of religion, liberal social attitudes, conservative social attitudes, public schools, Republicans, Democrats, global warming,  or anything else except the choices and actions of two bad, deranged people (and their accomplices if any turn up). 

There is also the silly spectacle of opportunistic politicians running around declaring that a crisis is upon us, and they are just the boys and girls to pull us out of it. In fact mass shootings of random strangers, as separate from multiple homicides in domestic disputes or conflicts between rival groups of criminals, though horrible events,  are so rare as to be insignificant  in terms of life’s risks.  They are a small fraction of the total number of murders in the country, and the probability of becoming a victim of one is very close to zero.  Any efforts to “do something” to prevent murders would be far more effectively spent in working to lessen the larger dangers people face routinely in many parts of the country’s large cities. 

Of course one of the somethings some politicians want to do is use the crimes as a possible opportunity  for disarming private citizens.  So it is worth remembering that the right to self defense is a right, not a favor bestowed on the proles by their rulers, contingent on no crooks or psychopaths ever doing anything bad with a gun.