David French at National Review:
This was the University of Texas tower attack on steroids, conducted out of nowhere, with meticulous planning and at great expense, from a person who doesn’t seem to fit any normal profile of a mass shooter. There is much we have yet to learn, but for now, this is one of the most chilling and mysterious events I’ve ever seen.
In a decade of blogging, I’ve followed a lot of public mass shootings, and this busts the profile for sure. I’m glad there are people out there relieving ignorance about the legal status of machine guns.
I’m still going to stick with my initial speculation that this guy lived in a 400k house, had two planes, and a clean record: he fits the profile of someone who could have afforded a legal machine gun. I’m not going to be surprised if that turns out to be the case.
But then again, we live in weird times.
One thing French probably should have added, though it is implied–it’s obvious to anyone with significant contact with the gun culture or someone who thinks economically a lot, but this link probably ought to be pointed out to the layman–that due to the Hughes amendment, prices for legal automatic firearms have skyrocketed in the civilian [non law enforcement/military] market, since the total quantity in the civilian market is fixed but demand outstrips the supply of the existing stock coming back onto the market. Same phenomenon as prices for Picasso paintings.
The chances of this being 100% accurately reported are 0%– as to what the actual percentage of what is true versus what we are told, obviously we cannot know, but I can almost guarantee you that police and everyone else on a public payroll has been VERY THOROUGHLY told what to say and what not to. You know that the news is going to run through a script they pull out of a desk drawer. It’s virtually impossible for us to know that ANYTHING they say is true, or pretty much anyone except people who were there in person and speaking on their own.