Disclaimer: I am an Army veteran, and I was trained in the use of military weapons although I have never killed anyone or participated in a firefight. I do not own a firearm, and I have not even handled one since my discharge 40 years ago.
The story is just coming in, and all I really know about it is the first disjointed attempt by reporters to assemble the facts. I have a few thoughts on the subject that do not require the details.
A man walked into the city hall in Kirkwood, Missouri, and killed five people, including two police officers and three city officials. The mayor was wounded.
More on the flip.
The core of the NRA/Right-to-bear-arms movement is the Second Amendment. It doesn't say explicitly that everyone can have a weapon, but it has been interpreted that way. When it was written, firearms were ubiquitous on the frontier, less common in the cities, but hardly restricted anywhere. "Firepower" was one to two shots a minute, and modern weaponry could not have been imagined. The Second Amendment was written after a successful rebellion, but before the United States had its own standing army, and the emphasis is on having a citizen militia that supplied its own weapons.
The base argument of the Second Amendment crowd is that it is only weapons in the hands of citizens that keep us free, because if we were disarmed, our liberties would be taken.
Got news for them. Our liberties are being taken anyway. And their pistols and hunting rifles won't make any difference if the government sends the Marines to put down a local NRA chapter taking part in armed rebellion.
So a citizen with a grudge kills five public servants, presumably hard-working people doing their best for the community.
If the NRA is logically consistent, they will applaud this despicable act as a Second Amendment defense of freedom. They will say that this is the reason that the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. They will make this disturbed murderer a symbol of freedom, and now that he is dead, shot down in his tracks by the brother officers of the two slain policemen, they will make him a martyr.
I don't have answers, and there are so many weapons already in private hands that it is unlikely that they will ever be controlled in any meaningful manner. But if weapons in the hands of citizens are the path to freedom and liberty, then Iraq is the model to which our government should aspire.