There’s a lot still utterly puzzling about Las Vegas and the shooting there. No matter which causal narrative you wish to explore, given what is publicly known, there are things that not only don’t fit, but don’t fit in a way to make it unlikely, if not seriously so, that any given narrative is true.

My current bets are SSRI’s – though there the weakness is the clarity with which he planned this over weeks, or that it turns out he did do this with antifa or for ISIS.

While I’m still discounting reports of a second shooting nest or separate shooter in the crowd, etc., unless film footage is released of the hotel hallways, etc., I’m not discounting a second shooter in the room who got away.

That said, such speculation, and the execrable SNL sketches on the subject, are not the main point here. As an aside, I don’t find New York liberal intolerance much worse than Hollywood liberal attitudes, but I do find a special “smug” vibe coming off the NY crowd.

Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, stated that “juvenile delinquent” was an oxymoron. One could only be delinquent if one was responsible, and a child was, by definition, one who was not held accountable – only adults could be. This of course explains why we look at liberals like children – because compared to conservatives liberals are not high in conscientiousness, and that is part and parcel of being willing to take responsibility for things and see them through.

It is also part and parcel of the lessons in Eric Raymonds “Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun” – It doesn’t matter if you intended all of the consequences when you chose to do something, including not focusing on how you handle things like deadly weapons and doing something by “accident.” That even for those who are already responsible, it underscores constant attention and responsibility, and awareness that things can go horribly wrong if taken for granted.

While I believe the SNL sketch was done with malice aforethought, the particular jibes show they fundamentally do not understand us. Jordan Peterson would tell them – if they would listen instead of calling him a vicious hateful bigoted alt-right Nazi – that they and we fundamentally see the relationships of cause and effect, and between things and people in the world differently, which explains the blindness of two jibes (in addition to the penis size ones tied to insecurity and guns as phallic symbols to compensate for insufficient manhood).

First – the supposed three percent needing guns as a security blanket. Second, the jibe about loving cops, and fearing the government.

As much supposed liberal humor goes, it’s of course predictable and boring.

The security blanket? Gun owners know all to well in their hearts the maxim that when seconds count, the cops are minutes away. 72, to be exact, in Vegas. No, guns are not a panacea – The Giffords shooter was taken down with a tackle (by a gun owner), the Vegas shooter was too far away for anything easily portable to such a venue even if it had been allowed in, and sometimes the killer or crook has the drop on you – but it does give you options and it is a matter of wisdom as to which ones are available, and how to best use them.

It is no more insecurity to carry arms as a free man to defend one’s life, liberty, etc. and to deal with those who do not respect yours than it is to buy a generator if you live in a hurricane zone. You may never need it, but that time you need it when the power is out for five days? Yeah, that.

And as to government and cops? While the badge gang doesn’t have the good relationships with conservatives they used to, most of us understand that if they’re doing their jobs, they are necessary. They’re also local. Respecting cops and firefighters and soldiers who are doing their jobs, especially since so many of us have been in one set of those shoes or another, is a much different prospect than carrying arms in the event the government becomes tyrannical.

Even if a leftist dismisses communism and it’s attendant fellow-ideologies as being existential threats, the Germans – and the National Socialists were also of the left – proved how quickly a free country can become a totalitarian dictatorship. A government that doesn’t trust free men with guns either does not have citizens who can maintain a functioning free country, or has no interest in its citizens being free.

And since SJW’s always project, leftists who don’t trust their neighbors with guns do so because they know they cannot trust themselves with guns. I’ve even heard this directly from teachers after Sandy Hook.

It’s all about responsibility, and assuming it, rather than blaming it all on others.