by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

Why am I not surprised?

Dayton police said the gunman had cocaine, Xanax and alcohol among other substances in his system at the time of the mass shooting before police fatally shot him. Montgomery County Coroner Kent Harshbarger said that authorities also found a bag of cocaine on Connor Betts, 24.

Xanax is not an SSRI; it’s a benzodiazeprine.

It is a drug of abuse especially in persons who are using or abusing other drugs.

While this class of drug is not associated specifically with the rage-monster risk that exists with SSRIs there remains a live issue when it comes to prescribing a drug like this (if indeed it was a prescription drug, and he wasn’t abusing it on a “recreational” basis) to someone who his friend, who got busted for having a bong on his kitchen table along with a gun when the FBI came calling, said they had used drugs, including hard drugs, daily over an extended period of time.

What appears quite clear is that this guy was severely mentally compromised.  The problem is that the “Red Flag” screamfest won’t do a damn thing, because if this guy can get (and did get, as he had with him) cocaine he can certainly get a gun on the black market as well.

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out the only real answer to these issues is that if you’re too dangerous to be allowed to have a firearm you’re too dangerous to be free on the street.  But we refuse to go down that road, which is the only just road to travel in this case, because (1) you must respect due process of law, and (2) when the authorities get this one wrong, and let someone out who they shouldn’t, where the public should build a gallows and who they should hang from it is obvious.

Simply put the authorities refuse to take responsibility, just as happened in Philadelphia where the man accused of shooting six cops through his ceiling (who apparently were trying to execute a drug bust) had multiple serious felonies on his arrest record that were entered nole prosequi (in other words, they dropped the charges.)

Now this can happen, sometimes for good cause.  But a repeated record of this sort of thing when it comes to violent felonies is another matter.  There’s simply no argument for that; this isn’t a drug matter where the only persons involved were consenting adults.  Violent felonies have a victim.

Of course now the US “Attorney” has weighed in:

The alleged shooter last night, Maurice Hill, is a previously convicted felon with a long rap sheet.  We have plenty of criminal laws in this City – but what we don’t have is robust enforcement by the District Attorney.  Instead, among other things, we have diversionary programs for gun offenses, the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime, and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored.

Oh you mean like 15 USC Chapter 1, which is a federal (not state) law and which you, **********, have refused to issue one single indictment under against one medical or drug provider in your jurisdiction despite virtually every one violating that law and screwing the population in your district out of tens if not hundreds of billions a year?

Heh, he’s outraged I tell you outraged — that one felon got to commit a lot of felonies and didn’t get busted.  That’s nice.  The hospital where all those cops went?  I bet it commits 100+ felonies under 15 USC Chapter 1 a day and unlike drug possession, which has only a self-victim (that is, it’s voluntary and it’s the person with the drugs) these felonies have unwilling victims — the people generally who get individually and collectively screwed.  How many of those have been prosecuted?  One dude with a gun, lots of crimes, bad.  One building full of dudes with a bunch of drugs, scalpels and other implements committing more crimes a day than this jackwad committed his entire life, robbing everyone in America to the tune of $25 a day, every single day, or roughly $10,000 a year per citizen and it’s all good because it’s just “the little guy” — not the “boys in blue” — who get ****ed!

But back to the central point here — mass-shootings.

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