As regular ZGBloggers know, "ZGS" is my abbreviation for the coming Zero Government Society; and since I doubt if it will have any school shootings, I could leave the rest of this page blank.

But no, perpetrators of these horrid krimes may have mis-wired brains, and even having a free society cannot fix that. But as below, there's good reason to expect the number to be close to zero.

First, a quick scan of the rampage school killings can be seen here, and the table brought me some surprises. It lists 65 incidents since 1927, but only 22 of them were in the USA, the country where access to guns is least obstructed. Others have taken place in many other countries, even the USSR and China; and often knives were used when guns were not available. So the mind of the killer matters a whole heap more than the weapons he chooses.

The second surprise was the total killed: in those 65 cases of multiple murders, I counted it as 585. Every death is tragic, especially of children; but 585 in the whole world over 95 years compares with 583 in a single air crash - the 1977 Tenerife disaster. Yet the media prominence given to school shootings like that in Uvalde and Sandy Hook and Columbine suggests the toll is far higher. It's not.

In each case the murders were committed by someone profoundly frustrated and angry about something to do with the school; usually young, in his teens or twenties. It's not hard to see the source of that frustration.

- Kids are compelled to sit and be indoctrinated for the twelve most formative years of their lives, making some of them unbearably bored.

- They may come from a bad home environment.

- They may suffer from some defect, such as a stutter.

- They may be mercilessly bullied; kids can be cruel.

All these factors formed a "perfect storm" for Salvador Ramos in Uvalde, TX in May, for example. That slaughter was made worse when the police did nothing for over an hour, actually preventing mothers, frantic to rescue their children, from entering the school to make that attempt. A few evaded the cops and succeeded, but this made vividly clear that police have no duty to protect anyone except the government which pays them; also that nobody cares for a child more than his mother.

But in the ZGS there will be no compulsion to attend school, and if a child is bullied he or she will be able readily to choose different companions. For that matter there won't be many "schools" at all, for education will be carried out, often at home, as parents and students choose and pay directly for the education service chosen. So there might be one or two of the above factors present, but not all four. As for police, again there will be only guards whom someone has paid under contract to provide certain specified services. Those won't include preventing parents keeping their children safe.

That's why I doubt that we shall see any rampage school killings.

It's also why those who are misled by politicians frothing at the mouth to deprive ordinary folk of our natural right to defend ourselves with any weapon we choose, should rapidly shift their focus: we all agree that it's a terrible thing for children, trapped in a classroom with perhaps one door, to be shot or hacked to death. Merely depriving killers of one particular type of weapon will change his mind and intentions not one whit; he will merely choose another way to kill, as happens overseas.

The solution is simple: terminate the government school monopoly along with all associated laws and taxes, and let the market handle the demand for education. Better yet, terminate government totally, as is proposed here on the ZGBlog.