In the gun business, talk--like life--is cheap

As we can see, the conversation on guns and gun control is like a supernova: A massive, unexpected “bang,” a great deal of light and heat, and then—nothing.  At the moment we are still in the “light and heat” phase, but give it time. The President is demanding “change” in gun laws “now,” while Wayne LaPierre, the head of the former sportsmen’s association-turned-proponent-for-domestic-arms-race organization—the National Rifle Association—has announced after careful consideration that the proper response to the Newtown massacre is…more guns! LaPierre claims that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Unfortunately it is not always easy to distinguish the “bad” guys from the “good” guys—since quite often the “bad” guys looked like “good” guys before they become “bad.”  Anyways, LaPierre thinks that at  least one armed “guard” or police officer should be on site at every school—about 140,000 according to the Department of Education. It sounds like a “solution,” until it is discovered that a gunman with a suicidal tendencies might not be deterred by the idea.

But talk in the gun business is cheap, just as life is to some people. Right here in that far-right “city” of Bellevue is the “headquarters” of  a fanatical gun rights organization called the “Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms” headed by some bozo name Alan Gottlieb, who frequently supplies inane commentary upon request to the local media after incidents like Newtown. This organization is alleged to have coined the phrase “I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands.” This line was a favorite of the late actor Charlton Heston, who told filmmaker Michael Moore in Bowling For Columbine  that the United States’ "history of violence" had something to do with its "mixed ethnicity"—a somewhat naïve statement giving the fact that most of the country’s most notorious and prolific killers were (and are) Caucasian. However, beliefs like this are in keeping with the prevailing paranoia; the irony is that most perpetrators and victims of gun violence are within racial groups, rather than between them. 

In the end it doesn’t matter who says what, or what laws are or are not passed; people with the intent to cause mayhem with firearms will do so by whatever means at their disposal.  This is, after all, a gun culture. This country has had a love affair with guns for so long it is seems that until everyone is “cold and dead” it is impossible to hit the reset button. It would also be helpful if we didn’t have know-it-all Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia, who believe that the Second Amendment clearly approves unlimited gun ownership, when it does nothing of the kind. As long as there are people in this country who choose gunfire over reason, incidents like Newtown will continue to occur, not in the least because the kind of people who generally perpetrate these deeds are the very people gun rights fanatics think should have guns—until, of course, they prove they shouldn’t. And then it is too late.