CNN’s Alisyn Camerota has fixed the gun violence problem in America.
No seriously, guys. She’s got it. The silver bullet. The ultimate nail in the coffin. The once-and-for-all endgame for shooting deaths. We’re all saved!
And all it’s gonna take is...gun store owners sizing up their customers and asking if they might be schizophrenic.
And as idiotic as it might sound to say it out loud, that’s actually what Camerota suggested Tuesday night after going on a rant about gun violence following the latest mass shooting, this time in Colorado (by an evil “white guy” who actually turned out to be an ISIS-sympathizing Arab Muslim immigrant from Syria….so….yeah, not a white guy).
"Why - in terms of making change, since it seems intractable at the national level - why don’t we go to gun shop owners and say, 'Do you think that this 21 year old who comes in and wants an AR-15-style weapon, do you think that he looks like he’s going hunting with this weapon? Do you ever ask him, ‘Um, by the way, do you ever think people are chasing you? Do you ever hear voices saying people are coming for you?’ Do you ever ask questions like that?' Because it sounds like this guy would’ve answered, ‘Yes.’”
CAMEROTA: "How onerous would it be to have a gun shop owner just say, 'by the way, are you hearing voices? Do you think people are chasing you? Do you think everybody is watching you?' It would have weeded out- possibly- this guy." pic.twitter.com/CdiH3DcsET
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) March 24, 2021
So now, on top of performing background checks, implementing mandatory wait times, and checking and double-checking multiple forms of I.D., gun owners should now profile their customers – especially those who are legally entitled to purchase a firearm, but have the misfortune of only being in their 20s – and grill them about their mental health, despite not actually being a qualified mental health professional, and despite the fact that most criminals probably aren’t going to admit to wanting to mow down a whole mess of people while trying to purchase the gun they plan to do it with.
That’s Camerota’s big “solution” – to just have the guy at Bass Pro ask if you’re hearing voices first, and expect the would-be mass murderer to say "Actually, yeah, thanks for asking, do they make a pill for that?"
Or – and just hear me out for a minute – what if we made it against the law for violent felons to own guns? What if we made gun store owners run a federal background check before selling them firearms?
Related: Sen. Cruz Blasts Democrats’ Gun Control Demands As ‘Ridiculous Theater’
What if we simply made killing people illegal? Then, perhaps, all the criminals would listen and we could all live in peace.
Or, perhaps hate-filled people bent on harming others will always find ways to do harm. And the only way to defend against such senseless violence is to prepare to defend yourself.