It seems a great many people believe that guns and mass killings go together—that if there were no guns, there would be no mass killings. That is an illusion. Human nature and ingenuity allow anyone intent on committing a horrendous crime to overcome obstacles standing between them and a murderous goal.

Richard Speck raped, tortured, and murdered eight nurses in South Chicago in 1966 by strangulation and beatings. Julio Gonzalez killed 87 people in New York in 1990 when he set fire to a nightclub. David Burke caused PSA Flight 1771 to disintegrate when it crash at full speed into a field in San Luis Obispo in 1987, killing 42 people. Timothy McVeigh and his fertilizer bomb killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995. A list of mass killings that did not involve guns would be very long.

Attempts to ban the instruments of mass killings are an exercise in futility and ultimately a distraction from the real cause of these tragedies. Human nature and ingenuity will always find a way to kill and destroy.

Violence is in our nature—not in the instruments we use.