Expect More Violence

From the Wall Street Journal

PITTSBURGH -- A 22-year-man who shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers over the weekend had been stockpiling guns and ammunition, buying and selling the weapons online "because he believed that as a result of the economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society," according to a court report.

[snip]

The shootings came during a particularly violent three days across the U.S., with shootings that left 14 dead in Binghamton, N.Y., and six dead in Washington state, where a father shot five of his children, ages 7 to 16, using a rifle, and later, himself. It also follows just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. Last month, a North Carolina man shot and killed eight people before police shot him and ended the rampage, and a 28-year-old man killed 10 people, including his mother and four other relatives, across two rural Alabama counties before killing himself.

As tragic and senseless as these murderous rampages are, I'm afraid this will become a more frequent occurrence in the near term. Insane people like Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann are setting fires under the people that need just a little push before they go into full blown crazy. People like Beck are repeating and repeating the completely false narrative that President Obama is going to take away all the guns, form a military police and turn us into a socialist dictatorship. It's like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. There are a lot of people with only a fingernail grip on reality and sanity and it takes merely a suggestion that feeds their paranoia to send them over the edge.

The economy already has a large percentage of the populace on edge, one in six Americans are either unemployed or underemployed and a goodly number of the rest are worried about their job. The media should be calling for calm and patience not "armed rebellion". The latest numbers from the FBI report that the applications for gun ownership are up dramatically which bodes very badly for an upturn in violence. It's a very simple equation. More guns plus more tension equals more violence.