It's just too easy.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Buffalo, New York or Uvalde, Texas.  It doesn’t matter whether the state has fairly strict gun laws or entirely loose ones.  With the kind of guns used in these mass killings, whether they are semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 or semiautomatic handguns like the Glock pistol, it’s just too easy.  Anywhere in this country, it’s too easy to buy a gun, and the guns themselves are too easy to use to kill human beings.

Here's all you have to do to use a semiautomatic rifle or pistol to kill multiple numbers of people:  pull the trigger and keep on pulling it.  The gun will go off, sending bullets at speeds greater than the speed of sound in the direction you point the gun.  If you keep pulling the trigger on a semiautomatic weapon, you can fire the thing two to three times per second.  Even taking into account reloading an AR-15, you can fire it as many as 130 to 150 times per minute.  Using larger magazines would cut down the time needed to reload the weapon and increase the rate of fire.

It takes time and discipline to learn to shoot any gun accurately.  In the Army, about three weeks is spent on learning to shoot an M-16 or M-4 rifle.  Most soldiers in the combat arms requalify on their weapons four times a year on a firing range. 

But it doesn’t take any training at all to walk into a room full of eight to ten year old school children and shoot and kill 15 of them.  It doesn’t take any training at all to walk into a supermarket and shoot and kill 10 people.  It’s easy because the weapons make it easy.  It’s easy because the laws regulating the buying and ownership of guns make it easy.  In New York, you need to be 18 years old to buy a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle that was originally designed for the military to use for the purpose of shooting at enemy soldiers. According to the laws of New York, you need to “be of good character” in order to pass a background check if you buy the weapon at a gun store.  If you buy it at a gun show, or from a friend or relative, you don’t need to pass a background check.  All you need is the price of the gun.

In Texas, it’s the same but they don’t even bother with the character requirement.  In the state of Texas, and in multiple other states around the country, after you buy either an AR-15 style rifle or a semiautomatic handgun you can walk around carrying the thing without a license.  You need a license to drive a car in Texas.  You need a license to go fishing or hunting.  You need a license to be a hairdresser or barber.  You need a license to sell liquor by the bottle.  You need another kind of license to sell liquor by the drink.  But you don’t need a license to walk around carrying a deadly weapon.  Unless there is a sign up at the door of a store like a Kroger or a Walmart that bans guns inside the store, you can walk into a place of business carrying your gun or guns.  It’s easy to find photographs online of people in a Walmart or a fast-food restaurant carrying guns.  The photos are easy to find because the state of Texas has made it easy to carry loaded weapons in public.

You want to know what you don’t need in order to buy and own a gun in most states in this country?  You don’t need any training at all on how to use the gun.  You don’t need to learn how to load it and unload it.  You don’t need to learn which lever on the gun is the safety if it has one.  You don’t need to be taught which position means the gun cannot be fired and which position means the gun can be fired.  If you buy a semiautomatic handgun or rifle, you don’t need to learn how to unload the gun and insure that a live round is not left in the chamber ready to fire.  If you have cocked a gun making it ready to fire, you do not need to learn how to un-cock it and make it safe.

You don’t even need to learn the simplest rule of gun ownership:  the admonition never to point a gun at another person.

The kind of rifle used by the gunman in Buffalo, New York – the AR-15 style “assault” rifle – was originally designed by the Colt company as a weapon for the United States military.  When I first fired its earliest military model, the M-16, you had to be in the military even to put your hands on one, and you could not buy one in a civilian gun store.  The military took the M-16 very, very seriously as a weapon of war.  We spent three weeks at West Point in safety and marksmanship training on the M-16.  We learned to disassemble and clean it and reassemble it.  We learned to fire it in the standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone position.  We learned to shoot the M-16 while moving from one place to another.  We learned to aim and shoot it after flopping to our stomachs on the ground. 

When I was in the army, as the company weapons officer, I had to sign what amounted to an affidavit every day certifying that I had accounted for every weapon in the company and every round of ammunition.  Falsifying that document – lying on it – was punishable by five years in the Federal Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.  Negligent homicide in the army was punishable by one year in Leavenworth.  But lying about whether you had accounted for all the M-16’s and pistols and M-79 grenade launchers and mortars and Light Anti-Tank Weapons was punishable by five years in jail.

Because of the gun show loophole, you don’t even have to tell a lie about who you are or how old you are or why you want to buy a gun for if you want to buy an AR-15 or a Glock semiautomatic pistol.  All you need to do is hand the seller the money and turn around and walk out of there.  They won’t ask you any questions at all when you buy the ammunition for the gun you now own, because owning as much ammunition as you want is protected by the Second Amendment to our Constitution, just as owning a gun, or any number of guns you want to own is protected.

It's easy because our laws, all the way up to and including our Constitution, make it easy.

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas announced today following the shooting in Uvalde that he will make sure there is a “good crime scene investigation,” and he promised that he will insure that “we determine the shooter’s motive.”  That should be easy for him.  There are 16 dead bodies, 15 of which are children in the second through fourth grades, and there will be plenty of shells from the expended bullets fired in the school.  There will be blood evidence.  They will probably even take fingerprints from the surface of the guns to make sure they belong to the shooter.

As for the motive, that’s easy.  You don’t need a motive to walk into a school and shoot a bunch of little children.  All you need is a gun, and getting one or two of those is just too easy.