Most people who knew Jared Lee Loughner prior to Jan. 8, 2011, would have characterized him as a caring and ordinary young man. He worked at fast food restaurants and attended community college. His track record was not without incident, though. It was tainted with blemishes not atypical for a youth, namely things like possession of marijuana paraphernalia and vandalism. Then, on one direful January afternoon in Arizona, after staying up into the early hours of dawn perusing websites about famous assassins, he loaded his Glock 19 with a 33-round clip and headed for a Tucson supermarket where a congresswoman was holding a meet-and-greet with constituents. Shortly after, the congresswoman was shot at pointblank range above the eyebrows, six people were dead and 13 were wounded. Many were also gunned down at pointblank range. If you took away the last several months leading up to the shootings when he began to form radical thoughts and exhibit obscure behavior, would you not have considered Loughner to be an ideal candidate to responsibly own a gun?

The same question can be posed about the killers in Colorado and Virginia Tech. One was a neuroscience doctoral candidate and the other an undergraduate English major. Both were presumably of above average intelligence and had attained some level of scholarly success. Neither were certified criminals who had spent their lives in and out of the penal system. Their public lives up to the point when they snapped had earned them the right to possess firearms by most people’s standards. But when they do snap, it is too late  —  their murderous weapons have been amassed and their delusions crystallized.

Here lies the blatant problem with gun proponents arguing that the few insane people who commit these massacres ruin it for the rest of them. Is it so implausible that someone can be sane his whole life, demonstrate responsible ownership of a gun and then spiral awry mentally and emotionally beyond the brink of rationality, to a point when his ownership of a gun no longer becomes either responsible or safe for those around them?

In Arizona, if you are over the age of 21, you can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Imagine being in an Arizonan bar on a regular Friday night. I have been to Arizona bars and many of them have signs urging patrons to leave their firearms outside of the bar, but I assure you that it is not much of a deterrent to anyone who has a strong desire to bring one in. After several drinks, an argument ensues between you and another drinker. Neither of you had any intentions of getting into an altercation the moment you stepped out of your front door. Neither of you consider yourselves to be irrational or insane, but after several shots and drinks, no one is immune from the lack of inhibition and clouded judgment that alcohol renders. The difference between ending up with a recoverable broken nose and a fatal wound to the aorta is that concealed gun  —  that concealed gun that was brought in by a law-abiding, normally mild-mannered man who, up to that moment of intoxicated rage, may have lead a pristine life. But none of his history matters once the gun is fired and a person is left dead. The mere possibility of such an irreversibly pernicious event should be taken seriously and they are not a figment of the paranoid imagination of those who do not own guns. Think of other instances that have the potential of a similar fate  —  a driver who was cut-off or a man wrongfully fired from his job of 20 years.

http://www.dailytargum.com/article/2016/01/rethinking-gun-rights