Big event in Missouri, one of the NRA’s prime fiefdoms:

TYRONE, Mo. – A door-to-door killing spree that left eight people dead in a rural Missouri community may have been triggered by the alleged gunman finding his mother dead in her home, the county coroner said Friday. The woman apparently died of natural causes.

The 36-year-old suspect was later found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in his pickup in an adjoining county.

Texas County sheriff’s deputies found bodies in five separate residences in the Tyrone area of south-central Missouri after responding to a 911 call around 10:15 p.m. Thursday regarding a disturbance.

But, of course, guns don’t kill people, other people do. Most often other people with guns, but still…

What the hell, I hear you saying, it’s just more of the same ol’, same ol’. Like the nine month old accidentally killed by his five year old brother last month. Or the business as usual shootings in St. Louis and Kansas City. We’re used to it now. We read about it every day, shrug and go about our business. Nothing we can do about crime and human nature. Especially armed human nature.

But there is a reason that St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson is joining forces with the folks who are taking the Guns “R” Us constitutional amendment that voters approved last August to the state’s Supreme Court – and it’s not just because the ballot language was misleading. The irony is, I’m willing to bet, that lots of the folks who’ve been cavorting in that NRA bed are also the folks who have been the loudest about defending the police from the demands of anti-brutality protesters. Nothing like doing what you can to make working police less safe while posing four-square behind your friendly local policeman.