Gun Control

Apparently, only people like Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire who doesn’t need anyone’s money and isn’t afraid to take on other blowhards like the NRA and Donald Trump, are able to say anything of substance about gun control.  President Obama, after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and several others were shot in January of 2011 in Tucson, promised he’d champion stricter gun control laws.  He didn’t.  He can’t afford to have the NRA throw its incredible power against him in his run for re-election.

Mitt Romney didn’t have the courage to say anything of substance after the movie-house slaughter in Colorado a few days ago.  And Wisconsin’s developmentally disabled Senator, RoJo the Clown, was allowed by the Republican Party to come out of hiding long enough to give an interview with Fox News after the Colorado massacre, and embarrassed us ‘sconnies again by saying that owning a hundred-round clip was a Constitutional right.  (OK, he didn’t actually say that.  He said limits on the sale of things like hundred-round clips would be an infringement on our freedom.)

For the record:  I am trained in the use of firearms by a highly-decorated combat veteran (my late father); have hunted with both rifle and shotgun; don’t have a problem with people who own handguns or hunting weapons; and I don’t think “Obama is going to take my guns away” if this nation should ever have the courage to make some stricter rules about what citizens can possess in terms of firearms and associated equipment.  Like hundred-round clips.

Mobthink and hysteria take over with far too many people every time the topic comes up.  The “from my cold, dead hands” crowd has been led to believe that any reasonable move toward controlling automatic weapons or hundred-round clips is the beginning of the end of the second amendment and will certainly lead to government goons coming to their house and taking away all their guns.

Even the members of the NRA don’t believe in the stuff the NRA leadership espouses.  Nearly three-quarters of NRA members believe the gun show loophole should be closed.  82% of NRA members think people on the U.S. terror watch list should not be allowed to buy guns.  78% of NRA members think it should be mandatory to notify police if one of your guns is lost or has been stolen.  Yet NRA leadership fights these common-sense control elements whenever they’re discussed or suggested.

Many people of my acquaintance who otherwise demonstrate the ability to engage in cogent thought seem to lose that ability when someone says it might not be a good idea to have laws so lax that some insane person (or a certified genius, or anyone) can buy an assault weapon and a hundred-round clip and six thousand rounds of ammo.  They drag out that hackneyed bit of illogic that goes “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and spout it as though it were some sort of brilliant thinking on a par with the Pythagorean Theorem.  And if challenged, they do the line-extension of the illogic by saying inane things like “cars kill people but we don’t ban cars”.

I believe the crux of the matter is their refusal to understand that reasonable restraints on the purchase of things like fully automatic weapons and high-capacity clips has nothing to do with their ownership of a Remington Wingmaster 870, their .30-06 Springfield, their Glock 19, their grandad’s M-1, their favorite varmint-eliminator, their target pistol, their skeet shooter, or any one of the thousands of other kinds of firearms commonly owned by everyone from sportsmen and hunters to urban women who feel more secure with a small handgun in their purse.

They continue to parrot trash-phrases like “if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns” and “tell me more about how criminals follow the law” – acting as if “banning guns” is an Obama plot just bubbling under the surface of his cool, disconnected, European-Socialist, intellectual elitism.  The NRA wants the sheeple to think that such a plot to “ban guns” is the hidden agenda of anyone who supports reasonable control.

As a nation, we don’t have the courage or capacity to talk about serious public policy at any level.  We’d rather talk about such crap as “defense of marriage” or “the war on Christmas” or what celebrity is cheating on what other celebrity.

Let’s change the topic from “gun control” to “fully-automatic weapon and high capacity clip control” and see what happens.