Shooters Shoot: The Thrill of Doing It

 

"We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true." – Kurt Vonnegut

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After each AR-15 slaughter, to respond to the calls for banning assault rifles, we hear the gun fetish crowd chanting one of their favorite bullshit lines: "Guns don't kill people, people do." 

It's a tactic to cast the culprit as a "killer," rather than a "shooter." It sells the convenient notion that the evil-doing perpetrator chiefly wanted to make his victims dead. Furthermore, it suggests the death-dealing method wasn't all that important. Thus, why banish one kind of rifle, when it's people that kill people?

Well, I don't buy it. 

From what I've seen, if they were denied their favorite tools, most of America’s mass-murdering shooters haven't appeared to have been schemers who would have simply switched over to bombs or poison. Instead, I believe those massacre-makers using AR-15s craved the intense thrill of shooting rapid-fire rifles at living people. So my take is that crazy spree-shooters don't usually care about much more than their evil mission to shoot at live human targets.  

OK, killers they were, but they weren't bombers or poisoners. They weren't knife-wielders or stranglers. Motive-wise, most have not seemed focused on knocking off specific people to achieve any particular gain. No, they were shooters. 

Shooters shoot. 

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre and the rest of the shills for the firearms industry like to talk about protecting constitutional rights. What they don't want to discuss is that by defending assault rifles they are mostly protecting frivolous thrills for their AR-15-owning members who are collectors and dress-up private militia types. 

Here's what I see: The AR-15 isn't a hunting rifle. Away from the battlefield, it seems to have little practical purpose. However, owners of such rifles surely do enjoy the thrill of shooting exotic weapons with the power to kill a lot of people, ASAP. 

Of course, most such gun aficionados would never shoot people. Yet, as we've all seen too often, for America's architects of bullet-riddled massacres, a sick longing for the wicked experience of shooting at living human targets can become an irresistible urge. It can be part of what forges a monster. What other factors turn some people into amoral monsters is a topic for another day.

Bottom line: We will all be better off if we stop putting AR-15s in the hands of monsters.