Here we go again:

Authorities in Texas Metroplex northern exurb Allen have not yet released many details about this afternoon's murderous mall mayhem.

Shooter not named as yet, but confirmed as dead (though no word as to whether by his own hand or thanks to some "good guy with a gun", badged or civilian).

Early reporting of a possible second gunman turned out to be erroneous. Multiple deaths confirmed, but how high a resultant body-count is not so far specified. Meanwhile at least 9 survivors has been hospitalized.

The lethal jerk was dressed in all black, with something on that looked to witnesses like body armor, and only G-d knows right now what his motivation was--yet one CNN talking-head expert has nonetheless theorized he was inspired by all our previous mall massacres across the Lower 48.

Cue the Gun-Grabbing Chorus to start singing their same old song.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 7:18:05 PM UTC-5, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> Here we go again:

This was a nice, quiet suburban area when we built here 14 years ago. With the out-of-control growth, crime has really taken off. I was in a store at the Allen center only three hours before this tragedy came to pass, so this is particularly frightening to my family and myself. Now, four hours after the fact, very few details have been released to the public. And, yes, this is a big pro-gun area now, so I also expect the singing to start soon.

So glad to hear you didn't happen to end up shopping three hours later on Saturday, MJ.

And yeah, I'd be joining the gun-banning chorus with you, if I only thought gun laws made more than a whit of difference in addressing these problems. (Actually, I'm not sure that such legislation even accomplishes that "whit"; don't see how those various types who are willing--much less anxious--to shoot innocents for any reason will ever be constrained by such legal strictures.)

Oh, and every once in a while, MJ, I will read of a gun somehow ending up in the possession of someone who is incarcerated. (One such case was the late George Jackson--who never should have been celebrated in song, even though it IS a pretty good song with a first-rate melody*--famously managed to get ahold of one while imprisoned; authorities' supposition was that Jackson's brother had smuggled it in during some visitation day, hidden inside the sibling's sizable afro.) If you can't "control" guns within an environment as secure as a prison, how are gun-control laws ever going to be effective in society at large, MJ?

If black-market firearms of every stripe and calibre weren't out there maybe there would be some, perhaps even substantive effectiveness in such laws**...but I gather they sure ARE available for purchase--though I doubt at gun-shop pricing---in frightening abundance after only a few gingerly-placed inquiries of those whom one knows or suspects runs in such underground social circles.***

STYBLE/Florida
============* Can never remember who recorded much less wrote that minor AM radio hit which barely cracked the Top 40 in late 1971, but I DO know that its tunesmith had read "Soledad Brother", Jackson's published memoir.
** Well, they ARE admittedly effective in persuading and placating many naive something-must-be-done! voters that "something" HAS been done.
*** I don't personally know any such people (simply because I try to avoid them), so this line of thinking is admittedly based on what I've seen in fictive movies more than true-crime documentaries; if this is mere Hollywood myth I've fallen for--that is, if I'm wrong about how relatively easy it can be to connect with types who will sell illicit guns if the price is right, I'd appreciate being set straight by any or all of y'all.