There's really no way to escape it: The Second Amendment is essentially treated as a second-class right. It's the only basic, natural right we have as human beings that can be stripped from you for any reason at all.

The only other thing people lose are voting rights and a lot of anti-gunners seem to want to restore those rights almost immediately.

But the reason I mention losing gun rights is because of something that recently happened in Minnesota. Two police officers and a paramedic were killed in the line of duty. Unsurprisingly, many believe this is more evidence that we need gun control, especially in light of what happened in Kansas City.

Yet, also like Kansas City, it turns out that the accused wasn't eligible to lawfully purchase a firearm.

It also seems that he was well aware of that fact since he tried to get his gun rights restored.

The man who fatally shot two Burnsville police officers and a firefighter/paramedic had a history of domestic violence and a lifetime ban on possessing firearms, according to a court record.

...

Gooden pleaded guilty in 2008 to assault with a dangerous weapon and he petitioned the court in 2020 to have his right restored to possess firearms, saying he’d only had traffic offenses since then and wanted to be able to protect himself and his family.

But the Dakota County attorney’s office wrote at the time that “the interest of public safety outweighs any private interest” Gooden may have.

In other words, he tried to get his rights restored and the judge figured that would be a very bad idea.

And yet, he got at least one firearm anyway, then used it to kill three public service workers and injure a fourth.

Here we have two high-profile shootings--oddly, the one with the most deaths has the lower profile, but still...--and in both, the person pulling the trigger was clearly unable to purchase firearms lawfully.

Somehow, some way, this guy got a firearm. He had a history of being violent and when he tried to get his gun rights restored, the courts said no. It clearly didn't stop him.

I might be a bit of an optimist, but I think most people are generally good, but they also all have things that they're going to do no matter what the laws in place say. For some, that could mean they're going to get a gun no matter what the law says.

We'd probably be surprised at the number of "reformed" felons walking around with an illegal firearm in their home or on their person, all because a gun represents a means of self-defense and they'd rather face prison again than being killed.

But most reformed people aren't going to engage in an armed standoff with police, then kill three people. 

The law doesn't stop people unless they decide that they fear prison more than they fear the ramifications of following the law. When the wrong person decides they don't fear prison, you get situations like Burnsville or Kansas City.

It doesn't get a whole lot simpler than that.