There’s a story that American Major General George Patton, after he defeated Nazi Field Marshall General Erwin Rommel in Africa, said that he was able to defeat Rommel because he had read Rommel’s book on tactics.
It makes sense that, if you can learn how your enemy thinks and the tactics that they use, you can thwart those tactics and defeat them.
Using that same logic, doesn’t it make sense that, if we read the manifestos that so many mass shooters leave behind, we can learn what they’re thinking and what their tactics were so that we can prevent future mass shootings?
Of course it does. After all, many mass shooters use the same tactics, so, knowing how to beat those tactics would seem to be a way to save lives.
So, why aren’t anti-2A groups using this information to try to save lives? That’s what Dr. John Lott is wondering, too (hat tip to here for the lead). Lott writes,
Last week, attorneys from Everytown Law, the legal arm of Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety, filed a lawsuit against a shop that sold the gun used in the fatal shooting of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022. The murderer is a racist who specifically targeted racial minorities. Everytown claims the attack “could have been prevented,” but in fact, the gun seller performed all of the proper background checks.
Others are also being sued, including the 18-year-old murderer’s parents and social media companies that allegedly “transformed and addicted” the murderer by allowing extremist content on their sites.
But the lessons from this shooting, like many other mass public shootings, are hiding in plain sight. One needs only to read the killer’s manifesto.
“Areas where CCW [carrying a concealed weapon] are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack,” wrote the shooter. “Areas with strict gun laws are also great places of attack.”
But Everytown ignores those quotes.
The answers on how to prevent mass shootings and minimize their damage are in plain sight.
But anti-2A folks (or, at the very least, the people that they’re listening to) aren’t looking for real answers. They’re looking to push their agenda.
No, those folks want to push an agenda that will get more people killed, and their hypocrisy about guns has to stop.
