If you want to know what Americans are supposed to think after the school shooting in Texas, head on over to CNN.  These are all headlines on the May 25th homepage: 

'This only happens in this country':  See furious senator speak about school shooting

Gun legislation stalled in Congress.  Why that won't change 

Shooting suspect was a loner who bought two assault rifles for his 18th birthday 

Here's how gun culture in the US compares to the rest of the world

Damion Lee:  'It's easier to get a gun than baby formula

Biden on guns:  'Where in God's name is our backbone?

Opinion: What people don't get about guns and the constitution.

All of that is on CNN's homepage, above the fold — and that's not even the complete selection.

What we need, implicitly or explicitly according to all these items, is stricter gun control.  What a terrible coincidence that there should be a mass shooting in a pro-gun state just days after Democrat senators introduced a new gun control bill that would require a federal permit to buy guns and would allow the government to confiscate those guns.  What a terrible coincidence that this happened just months before the Democrats are going to lose both houses in the midterms.  

If only we had more gun laws!

According to CNN, it's time to stop messing around:  After a shooting, says CNN, we don't ever pass gun laws, and that's why shootings keep happening.  Of course, in reality, we pass new gun laws all the time, especially when shootings happen: shootings are great political motivators.  Then, afterward, it turns out that the shooter made lots of threats, had a history of violent behavior, and that the FBI was watching him...  But of course, no one did anything to stop him.

Riddle me this, internet: if gun laws are so great, then why are there more school shootings now than when we had no gun laws at all?  Don't tell me that it's the fault of the AR-15; if that were true, the government wouldn't be trying to pass gun laws restricting all types of weapons.  New York City wouldn't require me to have a permit for a Civil War black-powder revolver.  CNN wouldn't be calling out states for their pistol permitting processes. 

Reliable semi-auto shotguns have been widely available for 110 years and repeating rifles with "high capacity" internal magazines for 150.  My grandfather brought a shotgun with him to his school most days — so did lots of the kids.  After class, they'd go hunting.  It never occurred to one of the kids to shoot the other kids.  Why would it have?

If you want to know what's changed in the last century, it's not the sudden and terrible rise of gun culture in America.  The Revolutionary War wouldn't have happened without gun culture.  What's changed is that, instead of teaching our kids to believe in God, we teach our kids (or allow schools to teach our kids) to believe in the government.  The government got ten times bigger during World War I, and has gotten a thousand times bigger since then.  It's given us federal law enforcement and lots and lots of laws.  That's what's happened over the last century.  That's what's changed: we gave up our freedom because someone told us we needed more protection.  And more protection.  And more and more and more — until we had damn little freedom left to trade in.  And boy, are we safe now!

So what is the solution to the rise, not just of school shootings, but of every single conceivable type of crime that has so inexplicably accompanied the continual growth of government and of federal law enforcement?  The solution is obviously more government!  It's worked so well over the last century — so pile it on!

I mean, it's not as though the government would ever create a crisis just to get more power...

Image: David.