Every time another one of these mass shootings happen - right when the Republicans start telling us that the answer is more guns, guns for everyone, guns for teachers, guns for students - I think about Chris Kyle.

Chris Kyle was the American Sniper guy - a highly decorated Navy Seal sniper with 150 confirmed kills in the Iraq War. Whatever else is true about him, he definitely was very good at shooting guns and used to being in combat environments.

On February 2nd, 2013, Kyle and a friend took a 25 year old Marine veteran to a shooting range, in the hope of helping him with his PTSD. On the way Kyle realized that the guy was dangerous, and texted his friend as such; the friend replied affirmatively

If this was a movie the 25 year old would have freaked out and drawn a weapon, and Kyle would have shot him or shot the gun out of his hand or held him at gunpoint. But it wasn't a movie.

What actually happened was a Navy Seal military sniper and his friend were both shot to death with Kyle's own guns. Both of them were armed, and neither had time to even unholster their weapons.

Kyle knew that the man he was with was dangerous. He knew he was armed - he armed him! To the degree that anyone could be forewarned and prepared for a situation, Kyle was. And yet the other guy shot two armed and trained men dead, got in a car and drove away.

I can spend the rest of my life at a gun range and not have the facility with firearms that Chris Kyle did. So how the fuck is a gun going to help me, or a terrified social studies teacher, because it doesn't look like it did shit for him.

No amount of training and no gun on your belt is going to let you dodge a bullet or keep it from ripping the life out of you. Every student and teacher at that school could have been trained military personnel with access to weapons and that many people could have still died

We know that because the 2009 Fort Hood shooting - which occurred on a MILITARY BASE - killed 13.

Today a bunch of men are going to go to a gun store and they're going to buy their third or 10th or 25th gun, because this scares them, and they think the gun is going to keep them safe.

They're going to be Action Movie Chris Kyle, not Actual Real Life Murdered Chris Kyle. And it's going to keep on happening. It's going to get worse and worse.

Hey! I've muted this thread - I didn't expect it to get RT'd so much - but I wanted to address one thing. A lot of people think that I am disrespecting Kyle by talking about his murder.

But there's nothing shameful about being a murder victim, especially one who is killed while trying to help another person! I honestly can't think of anything more honorable.

I never meant to imply that Chris Kyle had somehow failed, in any way, to protect himself, but that the assumption that we must all be constantly prepared to fend off gunfire is impossible even for the best prepared of us