The Price We Pay...

Alabama man's 10 victims include family, strangers

(CNN) -- An Alabama man went on a shooting spree Tuesday, killing 10 people -- family members and apparent strangers -- before turning the gun on himself, officials said.

By the time Michael McLendon ended his rampage, he had fatally shot his mother and set fire to her house, killed his grandparents, his aunt and uncle, the wife and child of a sheriff's deputy, and three other people, according to the coroners of the two counties that the shooting spanned.

We have another heartbreaking story involving another mass shooting. Some unstable person, upset with their lot in life, decided it was better to go out wreaking havoc and raining death than quietly; taking innocent lives with him. Ten innocent people - some family, some random strangers - did not see the sun rise this morning because someone else had a bad day and decided to share.

What disturbs me, and I hate feeling this way, is that I read this:

He fired a 30-round burst with what appeared to be an M16, grazing Police Chief Frankie Lindsey with a bullet.

and all I can think of is, great, more fodder for the antis and another Assault Weapons ban. It angers me that I think this way - angry both at myself for thinking of the political ramifications while folks are still grieving; but also at the anti-gun side, because as certainly as the sun will rise in the East, there will be press conferences before noon decrying "assault weapons" and calling for a new ban. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference, but they'll feel like they've "done something".

Unfortunately, there's precious little we can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Firearms are prevalent, and there are blackmarket venues for obtaining them. More than likely always will be - the Soviet experience in Afghanistan revealed home forges churning out automatic AK-47s using primitive metalworking tools. The knowledge is out there and we won't get the genie back in the bottle.

Banning "assault weapons", whatever the criteria du jour used to define such a creature, is only going to affect those who play by the rules and obey the laws. It's not going to stop or even slow down an angry sociopath with an axe to grind and a score to settle. We can't read people's minds and determine their intent or mental health barring previous instances of instability.

And that's the most frightening aspect - we can't control it. No matter how hard we wish it were so, we simply cannot predict when a person will have had enough and passes the breaking point. Some, many, most never do. But for the outliers, the guys (and they are almost always guys) that have had all they can take and see no other way out, there's extremely little we can do about it.

Banning guns isn't the answer. It's not going to stop someone determined on a murderous rampage any more than a restraining order is going to stop an abusive spouse from playing piñata with his ex. Placing roadblocks in front of those who would obey the laws anyways doesn't make us any safer, it merely annoys the law-abiding and placates the sheepish.

Pray for the victims today, and hope that common sense and freedom do not come under fire.

That is all.