Anybody with half a brain will steer clear of 3D printed plastic guns.

• For the price of the 3D printer you could probably purchase half-a-dozen AR15s.
• The first death by 3D gun will be a shooter, who has a gun blow up in his hand.
• You can’t print plastic bullets.
• Metal bullets will still set off a metal detector.
• The 3D printed gun is not accurate.
• The 3D printed gun fires one shot at a time, leaving bystanders just enough time to tackle you while you try to reload and carry out your assassination attempt.

The 3D printed gun is no better than a $5 zip gun made of plumbing supplies from Home Depot. But that’s not the point. The point of the 3D printed gun is to show that, when anyone can print just about anything in the privacy of their own home, restrictions and regulations are just about useless. Old solutions will not work in a new world.

April 19, 2013 – Entire Boston & Cambridge area on lockdown

April 17, 2013 – West, Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion

April 15, 2013 – Boston Marathon Bombings

April 20, 2010 – Deepwater Horizon explodes

April 16, 2007 – Virginia Tech Massacre

April 19, 1995 – Oklahoma City Bombing

April 20, 1999 – Columbine High School Shooting

April 19, 1993 - Branch Davidian fire Waco, Texas

April 13, 1992 – Chicago floods

April 15, 1989 -  Tiananmen Square protests

April 18, 1983 – US embassy in Beirut was bombed

April 4, 1968 – Assassination of Martin Luther King

April 16, 1947 – Texas City Disaster

April 14, 1912 - Sinking of the Titanic

April 15, 1865 – Assassination of President Lincoln

 

Found this guy squashed in a parking lot as I was walking to my truck. This is by far the largest moth I have ever come across, dead or alive. I had some change in my pocket, placed there for scale. A bit of searching suggests this is a member of the family Sphingidae. At first I thought it was a small bird…

The large cat that was struck and killed in Orange County two Sunday is ago is a Florida panther, according to the results of a necropsy performed Tuesday.

“There is no reason to believe the animal is anything but a Florida panther,” said Dr. Mark Cunningham, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission veterinarian at the agency’s Wildlife Research Lab in Gainesville. Genetic-testing results will provide a conclusive answer, but it takes several months to be completed.

Cunningham said the carcass appears to be that of a young male panther, approximately 3 years old. It has a cowlick, which is characteristic of a Florida panther, and there is no evidence that it was a captive animal. In addition, while the carcass was essentially decimated, the heart, which was not damaged, appears to be normal.

“A heart defect occasionally seen in Florida panthers was not seen in this panther. The stomach was the only other organ present, and it was empty,” said Cunningham.

An FWC biologist retrieved the badly damaged carcass shortly after it was struck by a double tractor trailer about 9 p.m. Sunday, Dec 11 near Christmas, in east Orange County.

The major human-related cause of panther deaths is vehicle strikes. This is the 25th panther to die this year in Florida, and the 17th this year killed by a vehicle. In 2011, nine of 24 documented Florida panther deaths were attributed to vehicle collisions.

• Deaths of two endangered Florida panthers shatter state record

• Necropsy Confirms Panther Struck by Car in Orange County

Besides being a town where you can get a bullet casing embedded in your tire, I doubt there is another city in the USA where the “roach coach” is a purveyor of Peruvian Ceviche.

If we are going to talk about mental health as it relates to gun violence, we need to acknowledge the facts. Boys tend to develop schizophrenia in their teens and early twenties, girs a few years later. There really is no arguing this point.

Gun-owning parents who have even the slightest concern about their child’s mental health need to remove weapons from the home at the first sign of concern. But they don’t do it. Why? Because we are real good at denial. We don’t want to believe that our kid may be sick. That only happens to other people.

So while Washington DC talking heads go on about melting down all the guns or arming all the teachers, they are missing the point. We have a recognition problem. We do not (or don’t want to) recognize a dangerous situation as it is developing. Like so many things, if we as a society can educate and motivate parents, we could avoid so much suffering.

“Mental Health Services” are delivered after a problem is identified. 911 is called after shots are fired. We as a society need to learn how to identify and solve the ingredients of problems before they become problems.

If you have a kid and a gun, you’ve got the makings of a problem. Your gun needs to be locked. And locked away. All the time.

And you’ve got to act if you get that feeling in your gut. It’s easy to get rid of a gun. The police will probably stop by and take it away if you just ask. Sometimes they’ll even give you a gift card in exchange.