I was watching a documentary about a road rage shooting that killed a young mother in front of her two small children and her niece while she was driving them home from the store.
The man that shot her was exactly as we have all come to expect. Mid 20s, partly employed as handyman, living at home with his dad, driving a car his dad owned because he couldn't get a car loan for himself, dismissed from the military after basic training for unknown reasons, unmarried, no girl friends, and owned a half dozen guns. One of which he kept loaded in a holster attached to the right side of the driver's seat of the car he drove.
Why does this man have a gun? Why does he have a loaded gun right next to him while he's driving? There is no reason I can think of why this should be allowed. And there are many reasons I can think of why it should not be allowed. And his actions completely verified the reasoning that he should not have been allowed to have any guns, and especially not a loaded gun next to him while he was driving.
Yet where he lived (Georgia) there were no regulations against ANY of these factors.
The man himself had no idea why he pulled his gun out and shot that young mother to death. He tried to claim it was some sort of automatic response (from his military training) to the fact that the niece in the passenger seat of the woman's car threw water at him because he was tailgating them and shouting at them for going too slow. But this was all BS. A young girl threw water at his car so he pulled out that gun that he had right at the ready and shot the woman driving, to death. Then he sped off and packed his stuff and went on the run. He was caught by his own cell phone many states away. Still trying to claim his BS military training story.
The fact is that this woman is dead because the state of Georgia lets any idiot that thinks he wants a gun to have one. And as a result some of these idiots will use them in the heat of the moment without ever even knowing why.
But the real reason why it happened is because the gun was there, and because the man is an idiot that should never have been allowed to have a gun, or to own a gun, or even to be in easy reach of someone else's gun. He had no need of it. No reasonable use for it. And the fact that he kept it loaded net to him in his vehicle proves that he should never have been allowed to own it in the first place, because he's clearly not responsible enough to be trusted with one.
The biggest indicator that a person should never be allowed to possess a firearm is their desire to do so. The more they want it, the more surely they should be stopped from ever having one. And the biggest indicator that a person should be allowed to posses a firearm is their reluctant necessity coupled with their willingness to learn how and when to use it correctly, proficiently, and safely.
If we would design our firearm regulations around this simple axiom, we would save many, many American lives every year thereafter.