There are lots of them, certainly most of them. People like you and me. But a certain small percentage of them are flaming assholes of one sort or another, immature, criminal, foolish, careless, crazy, whatever.

So it stands to reason, the more sane and responsible gun owners there are, the more assholes you will encounter. And of course, its the assholes you hear about. As I try to point out in my post "statistically speaking" below, the instructor at this range was probably very competent and conscientious. But the more people you have engaged in this kind of activity the more likely this sort of accident will be to occur. If you sell more cars with big motors, more people are going to drive faster, and more people will have crashes, and the more innocents will die needlessly.

All countries have unfortunate shootings, by crime or accident. The reason they are a such huge problem here, as opposed to most other countries, is that there are so many guns and so many shooters here. It isn't something that happens occasionally, in another town. Its something that happens all the time, everywhere.

And the reason we have so many guns and shooters is...well, you tell me. I'll give you a hint. Go to your local newsstand and look over the "tactical firearms" magazines, what I like to call "gun porn." I don't mean the traditional journals written for hunters and sportsmen, I mean the stuff designed to cater to the GI Joes among us. I don't care how sane and responsible most of them are, a certain percentage is going to be really messed up psychologically, and a certain percentage will have accidents, and a certain percentage will have their guns stolen from them.. And no matter how small that percentage is, when multiplied by the total number of guns out there, and the total number of targets they have available, you have a problem. This hobby affects people who don't follow it.

I don't think this is carried in the DNA, this is a social problem-a form of "American Exceptionalism"; it is taught, nobody is born that way. And if social problems can be encouraged for private profit and manipulated for political indoctrination, then they can certainly be controlled for the public safety.