They go boom 3

I find it interesting that most of the perps in this month's rage-a-palooza had gun permits. What is the procedure for the renewal of a gun permit. How often does one need to renew it? Have these permits helped law enforcement in anyway? (after the fact at least, they've proven impotent as preventative measures)

There are a whole lotta tough questions to ask and no one wants to ask 'em. There isn't a gun debate. There's only a sideshow of horrors followed by mass disavowal, a few tepid calls for reason, and then nothing. Nothing at all until the next heartbreak.

Someone please make the badman stop.

PS--
there are two books on school shootings I'd really love to read:
Columbine (written over a 10 year period by a journalist with roots in Littleton)
and Why They Kill, a text heavy on criminology and the patterns and aberrations that propel someone to think of mass murder as the logical thing to do.