The Buffalo shooting would have been very different had it happened where I live

Let me say this right from the start: I am NOT trying to make light of what happened in Buffalo. 10 people are dead because of it and I am not celebrating that or glorifying it. It is a terrible situation perpetrated by a horrible person, period.

The media of course is all over this one because it involves a long-gun or as they call it an "assault rifle" and because the shooter was a white guy who was targeting mostly black people. They glance over the fact that he shot people indiscriminately and that the population of the area that he chose is predominately black. It's not like he was wandering the parking lot and if he saw white people he just skipped them.

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I have not read a great deal about this incident because the media in our country is already corrupting the story and trying to turn it exclusively into a race issue - which if the information they are presenting about the perpetrator, Payton Gendron, is true - it to some degree definitely is that. I tune out to this because the media is just going to do anything they can to once again turn the white supremacy volume dial up to 11 and only focus on that.

They have tried to blame this incident on political opponents of the mainstream media as well, blaming the attack on Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, and of course Donald Trump. How about we blame it on Payton? I mean he was the guy pulling the trigger after all.

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I also don't like the way about how there are pundits out there that are already speculating about how the only reason why Payton is alive right now is because he is white and if he had been black they would have shot him. Or, just maybe, just maybe, it is because when police arrived and gave him conditions for surrender, he complied. Perhaps that has something to do with it?

Everything has to be about race with the media and I just get tired of it. Is Payton racist? Well it certainly looks that way. It's just kind of frustrating to me that other racially-motivated attacks that have happened constantly over the past year don't get focused on nearly as much, because the criminal isn't white.

Anyway, before I get too worked up about this I want to point out that Buffalo, New York has extremely strict gun laws and this is just another example of how useless gun laws are seeing as how people that would use guns to cause harm to others, especially kill strangers, probably don't have a great deal of concern about what the laws happen to be. There is talk about how Payton specifically targeted this area because of their strict gun laws.

I live in a part of the country with very relaxed gun laws and just about everyone I know has a firearm of some sort. Most of the people I know either conceal or open-carry at all times. Had Payton decided to come to our local supermarket and start shooting indiscriminately, he would have had to face the fact that the people at that supermarket are going to be shooting back at him. This is why mass shooters don't target areas like mine: They don't want to contend with the very real chance that 30 to 40 percent of the people inside of basically any store in my county is going to be packing heat, is trained on how to use their weapons, and will definitely and legally return fire.

There's no doubt in my mind that the politicians are going to use this shooting as another reason to start something like "sensible gun control" debates again while completely ignoring the fact that if Buffalo had laws like my community does, Payton would not have been able to get away with this and maybe wouldn't have even attempted it.

In USA we have only two real choices as far as guns are concerned: We can pull an Australia and take away everyone's guns and good luck with that since the Constitution makes this route impossible, or we can recognize that there are crazy and criminally-minded people out there and take the necessary steps to ensure that you do not become a victim of them.

The Buffalo situation is tragic and again, I am not celebrating it in any capacity. Payton will deservedly spend the rest of his life behind bars or get the death penalty if New York even has that. In the meantime I know why these things don't happen where I live and if they ever did, the shooter would be eliminated long before the police arrive.