Logic might indicate that, after something like Sandy Hook (where actual children were murdered), people might hit the pause button on buying guns, just as a general “whoa” thing. (The devil’s advocate approach is that “Well, I’m not intending to do that with my guns, but if someone is, I need a gun!”). In fact, the logical “whoa, maybe guns are … lemme take a break here” idea is completely illogical to most; Smith and Wesson just fell 14 percent, but the reason isn’t that their guns are worse or people are taking a break from guns. It’s actually that no one really thinks gun control measures will ever be passed, so there’s no real rush to go out and get guns. Depressing, eh? After a mass shooting, where there’s a brief political tide that something might happen, people rush to get guns, lest they be restricted soon. To quote CNBC:
“When people think they won’t be able to buy guns, they buy guns,” said an industry analyst who asked not to be identified.
This can get you down a bigger rabbit hole about whether profits, as a concept, are immoral. (It has always struck me as ironic that typically the word “non-profit” is a synonym for something good, or an organization trying to pay it forward — it’s almost as if the two ideas can’t relate.) I’m not going to head down that specific rabbit hole here (brief thought, though: in a capitalism, you need profit to sustain, so by definition I don’t think it can be immoral), but these are interesting things to think about, for sure.
Any excuse to by something that’s specifically designed to kill is a good excuse, right?