The Ben Shapiro show is sponsored by Express at VPN. Privacy is a right, not a privilege. Defend your rights at Express.VPN.com slash Ben. The mass shooter in Lewiston, Maine is still at large. He has done extraordinary damage, 18 dead, 13 injured, lives ended, lives destroyed, families wrecked. In America, such events quickly evolve into the usual arguments. Those who argue for gun control blame the weapon carried by the shooter. They point out that he was carrying in AR-15 and that he had a high-capacity magazine. They say that Maine's gun laws are too loose and that if they had been tighter, the shooter never would have been able to obtain the weapon. Gun rights advocates argue, by contrast, that the shooter was mentally ill, that according to the Washington Post, he had, quote, so alarmed people around him that he was

hospitalized and received mental health treatment this summer. People who knew the shooter told

investigators that, quote, in recent months, he described hearing disturbed voices and had increasingly

become fixated on the bowling alley and the restaurant where he allegedly opened fire. It's unclear

where the shooter got his weapon. If he did not have a criminal record, a federal background check would not have stopped him from getting a weapon anyway.

But Maine also has a so-called yellow flag law that requires police to get a medical practitioner to evaluate someone with mental illness and identify them as a threat before the police can petition a judge to order a person's firearms seized.

If ever somebody would have qualified

for use of such a law, the shooter in this case would have qualified. In the end, the arguments

for and against gun control aren't generally about the efficacy of any particular policy, at least

not when it comes to mass shootings. Mass shootings are statistical outliers. The vast majority

of homicides involving firearms in the United States, are committed

with handguns, not long guns. Active shooter events constitute a very small percentage of overall

homicides. While the media tend to cover large-scale mass shootings like the Lewiston shooting,

they tend to ignore mass shootings in cities like Chicago, despite the fact that firearms homicide

rate for black Americans is some 14 times higher than that for white Americans.

Now, the arguments for gun control tend to centralize around one particular argument, the argument that no one, quote, unquote, needs an AR-15, or any gun, for that matter, that's the

argument that President Biden routinely makes.

For those brave, right-wing Americans that say it's all about keeping America, keeping America's independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something a little more than a gun.

The idea, the idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick.

It's just sick.

It has no, no social redeeming value.

Zero, none.

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