Are you kidding me?

After the Newton shootings last December, the uproar over gun control led to the National Rifle Association spokesman calling for more guns.  Wayne LaPierre said we should arm teachers and have armed security guards in schools, essentially saying more guns would prevent more gun violence.  Yesterday we saw an example of how well that will work out.

Yesterday this guy at the Navy yard in Washington, D.C. began his rampage with a five-shot Remington shotgun. His first two victims were a police officer and a security guard; not sure if both were armed or not, but this guy took a pistol carried by one of them and continued shooting his way through Building 197 at the Washington Navy Yard.

What exactly does that say about more guns in places like schools. If a wacko like this can take down two professionals and then use their guns to continue shooting, what exactly is a teacher even with some training going to do against somebody like that?

This was the fifth mass shooting, defined by the FBI as four or more killed besides the attacker, since Newton.  According to one news source something like five states have tightened gun control laws while twenty have loosened them.  Iowa now allows blind people to carry in public places.  Louisiana passed a constitutional amendment that negated all other gun control laws in the state, including the restriction against convicted felons from having them.  Convicted felons actually have a case going through the state courts there that demands they be allowed to carry guns and that restriction already has been declared unconstitutional by a lower court.

On the plus side, The New York Times reported the shooter was not allowed to purchase an AR-15 because sale of such weapons in Virginia is limited to Virginia residents and he gave an address in Texas. The shooting could have been much worse.

What is wrong with us as a nation that in the face of mass shootings becoming a regular occurrence we go off the deep end defending the right to carry not just guns, but guns one step short of military machine guns designed only for killing people?

Here's a USA Today report on the Louisiana constitutional amendment that was passed by voters in a referendum last November by more than 70 percent of the vote. The report also goes into other states considering the same sort of legislation.

Into the belly of the beast

Maddow Blog: Half the mass shootings in U.S. history have happened in the past six years.