Because clearly the gun acted alone

The Sun this morning once again blames violence not on criminal psychopaths, but on an inanimate object:

A great deal is not yet known about the horrific quadruple murders in Cockeysville that have led police to charge a 15-year-old honor student with murdering his parents and two younger brothers. But this much is clear: The presence of a gun in the house did not protect the Browning family; it put them at a greater risk of violence.

That's a pretty cool leap in logic. The Sun basically says "we don't know enough, but we know enough to know that it was the gun's fault." Never mind the fact that the presence of a knife, hatchet, sledgehammer, or other large sharp or blunt object could have come to the same result.

Baltimore County police say Nicholas W. Browning used his father's handgun to kill his family on Friday night. While such familicide is hardly common, numerous studies have shown that having a gun in the home can be exceedingly dangerous. In fact, a firearm is far more likely to be used to shoot a family member or acquaintance than to defend the home against an intruder.

Of course, there are also numerous studies that show such ideas are poppycock.

We do not advocate the banning of all guns, but there are measures government can take to reduce their risk. Maryland has a law requiring adults to store guns in a place that is inaccessible to children. Perhaps that rather open-ended and rarely enforced requirement needs to be strengthened.

First off, I do not believe for a second that the Sun editorial board does not want to ban all guns, given some of their past editorial stances. However, the Orwellian nature of their next sentence (because lord only knows how they want to enforce this gun storage law otherwise) is immediately negated by their next comment.

Such legislation wouldn't necessarily have spared the Brownings, of course.

So what the hell are we arguing about? Gun laws such as the ones the Sun wants to enforce would not have prevented this instance of violence. Nor, potentially, would a ban on guns either given the number of other dangerous objects available to folks inside the home

Clearly the circumstances of this murder are tragic and sad. However, the Sun's rush to judgment is amazingly short sighted and well beneath the standard of a newspaper that considers itself a "major" daily.