answer:But he didn’t buy an automatic rifle. Those are as heavily regulated as prescription drugs. They run background checks on people buying guns, you know. If you’ve been deemed nuttier than a fruitcake by a professional, you can’t own a firearm. Here in the States we tend to assume that people are sane until it’s demonstrated otherwise. The thing is that the laws weren’t all written at once, nor in the same mindset. The patchiness is caused by issue-driven campagins. Someone lobbys for drug restrictions, and gets them. Someone else pushes for psychological evaluations. Someone sees an issue and decides that there ought to be a law, and the ball rolls on to their Congressmen. AFAIK our legal system was designed to be modified on an “as-needed” basis, the better to respect our individual freedoms. You want to hear something scary? I have access to toxic chemicals and I supply about three thousand dinners a week. Nobody ever seems to worry about that, though.