I am not going to speculate at all about the motivation of the gunman who shot up the newsroom of the Annapolis Capital-Gazette newspaper on Thursday afternoon. There has been a lot of loose talk about killing reporters, and a lot of loose talk from the president* about enemies of the state, which always gets the goobers stirred up in the arena. But there’s no telling what effect—if any—that ranting had on what apparently must have been a very twisted mind. I will not attribute this latest mass murder to it if everybody else promises not to talk indirectly about “the climate” or, god be good to us, engage in another series of homilies on the subject of “civility.”

God, though, I am tired of this country’s lubricious relationship to its firearms. I was tired of it in 1994 when John Salvi was able to get a gun so he could kill two people at women’s health clinics up here. I was tired of it seven years later when Mucko McDermott was able to buy five guns that he used to kill seven people at the tech firm where he worked. Salvi had a political motivation. Mucko was just a psychotic killer. It didn’t matter. Their victims all were just as dead. They were both able to arm themselves easily. That is what mattered.

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As the days go by, we will find out why the Maryland shooter did what he did. If he did this because he was inspired by anti-media rhetoric, then there will be time enough to deal with the people who indulge in it. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has been on it for a while.) If he did this as part of a domestic dispute, there will be time enough to deal with that all-too-common dynamic. If he did this because some circuits blew in his head, there will be time enough to talk even more about mental health.

But there is one thing that unites these disparate possible motivations. He did what he did because he was able to get a firearm that enabled him to do it. That’s what connects him to Salvi, to Mucko, and to all the others who, for whatever reason, decide to murder their fellow citizens en masse because this is a great country to do just that.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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