Recently I wrote about how legal gambling in America still hasn’t reached the depths of declining Rome, when patrons bet on gladiators in the coliseum. When I saw David Muir broadcasting from outside an Asian dance studio in Monterey Park, I realized we are almost there. We are using real-life mass violent death as nightly entertainment. The reasons why mass shootings occur? The “distal” (far away) reason is lack of sufficient fulfillment in social relations. The “proximate” (nearby) reason is the candy-like availability of automatic weapons. The overall reason is our libertarian philosophy that says we can’t regulate corporations who make and sell the weapons, or the consumers who buy them, because . . . well . . . liberty. But we can educate people to not use the battlefield weapon they just bought, bury them alongside their victims, and tune-in to the next mass event, probably tomorrow night.
