“You can’t stop mass shootings by punishing people with mental illnesses,” reads a recent editorial.

More honestly, you can’t actually stop mass shootings.

Let’s be clear about what a mass shooting is. It’s a criminal conspiracy. If the shooter doesn’t tip his hand or do something stupid, there’s no real way to stop it. 

The gun control argument bets everything on preventing the shooter from gaining access to firearms. But any dedicated killer (and somebody willing to die or spend the rest of his life in prison is generally dedicated) will get his hands on the weapons he needs.

That’s true in Europe where there’s plenty of gun control. And Islamic terrorists racked up a kill count higher than most mass shootings by getting behind the wheel of a truck. 9/11 was carried out with box cutters. A man who started fires on a train killed more people than most mass shooters.

Gun control is not going to stop a mass killer. 

What can stop him is either prior intervention or intervention on the scene. We’ve made it very hard to lock up the mentally ill or the potentially dangerous. Some of those laws are there for good reason, but it means our ability to do anything about future attacks is very limited.

The FBI has had a great deal of success stopping Islamic terror plots by seeding informants. Instead of shutting down 8chan, seeding it with informants might be a much better strategy.

But, if any of the attackers had contacted anyone beforehand to share their plans, we would likely know about it by now. 

Islamic terrorists turn to ISIS for guidance. And that’s how the FBI gets them. Without its equivalent, stopping non-Muslim mass killers is going to be very difficult.

We can have a whole lot of armed guards everywhere. Or we can enable people to carry weapons which might allow them to stop an attack.

But gun control proponents hate that idea even though it’s more likely to stop an attack than the same gun bans that haven’t worked in Europe.

What’s left? Not a whole lot.

The one thing that is left is addressing the problem at the source by insuring the media doesn’t make them famous or report on their motives.

The idea is obvious controversial, but it’s been widely discussed. And the media refuses to cooperate.

It has first amendment rights, even if it uses those rights to enable mass killers to become famous, thereby motivating future mass killers.

There’s a second amendment right to bear arms.

Unlike the Europeans, we can’t lock up people on hypotheticals or because they’re mentally unstable.

So we can’t stop mass shootings. They’re something we have to live with as a tradeoff with the civil rights that we have.

The Left would like us to give up the 2nd Amendment. It won’t obviously hear about government restrictions on the media or locking up people who are a potential threat. 

And so mass killings become a political football that can’t be honestly discussed.