But I have to find time for this

CORRECTION: A reader tells me the link was bad. I was traveling and unable to check it. By now, everybody will be aware that RtO was referring to the Spring massacre. It has been nearly 3 days now and no report (that I have seen) how the killer got his guns. Here is a link to an early report.

How having a gun in the home provides security.

UPDATE: So let's review the situation up until the time the gunman shot seven and killed six of his own family:

He attacked his wife. He attacked his mother. He scared his brother enough to call the police. A divorce court judged him to be a threat to his children.

There is no mention in this story -- it is early yet -- whether the shooter was formerly a good man with a gun, or if he first acquired his gun after he was becoming known as a violent, but in a legal sense, not very violent person. No firearms or other weapons are mentioned in the early violent encounters. There is no mention of surrender of firearms under terms of a protective order, which is sometimes a condition in some jurisdictions. There is no mention of firearms or other weapons in the order of the divorce court.

It is hard to see, based on this limited information, that the "system" failed. Under our system, you get (at least) one free homicidal attack before you are tagged as "dangerous."

It is also hard to see how his victims would have been safer if they had had guns. Is a 15-year-old girl going to answer the doorbell at her home with a gun loaded, cocked and held in shooting posture? And even if she does, how likely is she to win a shootout with a homicidal, armed man already in attack mode?

But something did fail here. Or, rather, something worked exactly as the gundamentalists want it to work: Either a violent man was allowed to keep his gun; or a man well-known among those close to him to be not only a violent talker but also a violent actor was allowed to get a gun.

Since he was in Texas, he could have walked around waving that gun, and it would have been a violation of his "Second Amendment rights" to have stopped him, questioned him or excluded him from a public space, like the public road leading up to his in-laws' house.

Result: 4 more child sacrifices plus a couple of innocent adults.

Every gun owner in the country gets to own a piece of this legacy.