"America"

There was a time when yet another mass murder in America would at least rate a passing mention in a presidential debate. Yesterday’s shooting in Hesston, Kansas, that left three victims dead, not including the gunman, and 16 others wounded, some of them critically, didn't. Perhaps as a mere workplace plus another place plus a third place shooting, it's too pedestrian these days. Perhaps an American culture of spree murders is simply less important than promising you won't make American businesses serve The Gays.

But maybe it's for the best that Republicans stop talking about our mass murders. We're learning more about the Kalamazoo, Michigan, mass murder—that would be the Uber driver who drove through the town killing people, if you're finding it hard to keep track—and it turns out that killer fits a familiar profile.

A longtime, close friend of the Kalamazoo shooting spree suspect said Jason Dalton is a staunch Second Amendment supporter who feared that recent mass shootings could lead to gun control. “He was a gun enthusiast. He’s always been pro-Second Amendment,” Dalton’s friend, who asked not to be identified, told 24 Hour News 8 on Wednesday, providing some of the best insight so far into the suspected killer.

So it seems the Kalamazoo mass murderer was in part influenced by the heavily promoted Republican theory that Obama was going to take all our precious guns and bullets away to stop mass murderers, so he had better buy more guns in case he needed to commit one. Perhaps we should thank the Republicans for not even mentioning mass murders anymore, given that.

Anyway, there was another mass murder in America yesterday afternoon. As far as we know it wasn't by a Muslim man, but rest assured: if it was, we'd get right on that.