> I also don't often think of guns as reasonable in any
> way other than the one offered by the NRA.
I see the NRA the same way as I see the DNC: they are a lobbying group with a somewhat distorted view of the positions that they claim to speak for (in the NRA's case, their membership as a small subset of gun owners; in the DNC's case, the True Believers as a small subset of those who espouse general values that some Democrat politicians ascribe to sometimes), but really you could do a lot worse than to dismiss them both as outliers.
Or in other words, "The NRA/DNC doesn't speak for me" ... if you got all
your news about politics from the DNC, you might not vote for Democrats
:-)
> Maybe I'm misunderstanding the functionality of this weapon, but it
> seems like it democratizes the massacre in some way that makes the
> absolute psychopath a little more able to carry it out.
My feeling is that the absolute horror of this incident wouldn't be significantly different if he had a single 6-shot revolver and used it to kill 5 children plus himself, wholly within the realm of possibility. And certainly a 20yr old with little more than a few hours of practice could "master" the ability to reload a revolver; the skill required to commit mass murder is way less than what it takes to make it to level 3 of Super Mario Brothers. The moral function that it takes ... that's a different story.
Congrats on the recent and forthcoming additions to your family. I can say with high probability that the kind of event of last Friday should be the least of your worries about the health and welfare of your children; allocate your time accordingly.
/jordan