It was another bloody weekend in America's sick and twisted shooting gallery. This time, a man dressed in full tactical gear and carrying an assault rifle got out of his car at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, and started randomly shooting people on the sidewalk. A police officer who was coincidentally on the scene for another call took down the shooter after he had shot 16 people, killing at least 8 and possibly more. (Several people are reportedly still in critical condition.) This is seen as a huge success story among gun fetishists because it shows that a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun — with only a dozen and a half casualties. It's what we call "good news" these days.
Last week, we had two other major shooting incidents. One, in Atlanta, caused the whole downtown area to be shut down for hours after a man shot five women in a doctor's office and then disappeared into the labyrinth of office buildings. Before that, in Texas again, a man who was upset because his neighbors asked him to stop shooting his gun in the front yard at 11 o'clock at night decided to execute five of them in their home moments later. Both men were apprehended after massive manhunts.
