But what has me losing my normal detached bemusement about our current state has been the craven response of the elite of this nation to the slaughter in Colorado the last week at the opening of the Dark Knight Rises. There is the collective oh dear what can we do and guns don’t kill people people kill people and any regulation would be useless. We are treating these events like acts of nature a tornado or hurricane or earthquake and the thing to do is to have sympathy for the victims bury the dead and move on without making any changes.
While this is part and parcel of America’s 21st century what can we do spirit, it is especially hideous as in this case it has fucking blood over its fucking hands.
Granted the fellow with the guns wanted to kill folks but a) there had been a ban on buying weapons like the AR-15 which are nothing but man killers – the small caliber combined with the a lower muzzle velocity which causes the bullet to tumble the moment it hits makes it especially lethal. (this was the part that attracted the Pentagon’s interest in the weapons in the first place – the M-16 had problems but that is a story for another time) - in addition he had a 100 round magazine for the gun along with two pistols with extended magazines and gilding the lily he had a shotgun as well, along with body armor, a gas mask and 1 or 2 tear gas grenades – all of which he used to shoot up a dark movie theater killing 12 and wounding 70. This of course prompted the standard excuses from the chattering classes. Among the most hideous reaction was that of David Brooks who companied about the vehemence of the anti-nra crowd, as if that, rather than the dead in Colorado was the real sin. It’s a deeply corrupt thing to say but not surprising given his craven defense of Penn State while that scandal unfolded (it’s the hippies fault). There were well meaning talk about how the country is on the side of gun ownership and as such nothing can be done. All of this is depressingly familiar and will only result in more innocents being shot in the head.
Subtract those items and you have someone with murder on their mind but you have lessened the potential for damage at least. It’s a grim arithmetic but a man with a six gun is going to cause less damage than a man with a glock with an extender magazine. And a man with a baseball bat would cause less damage than that. The urge to kill will still exist but at least let’s not make it easy for these folks.
In a sane society nobody would be able to get his hands on an assault rifle (for the same reason you can't buy a Thompson sub machine gun) or the various magazines he used – the round magazine was banned in the 30’s as folks like Al Capone liked to use them and he wouldn’t have been able to order ammunition a gas mask and body armor over the internet. We are of course not sane.
It pains me that not a single person in the public forum has has the nerve to call the NRA out for what they are – and evil band of bastards who are only interested in selling guns and ammunition. They are as evil as it gets and the organization has to go. That along with the gun shows and the above assault rifles, the extender magazines and all internet traffic in weapons and ammunition.
For over 30 years they have been unpushined monsters with the blood of innocents on their hands. I don’t know what it will take to change the dynamics but I know if no one tries, it never will.
There are so many problems we have decided we can’t solve this being one of the most awful ones. Yes folks would try to find their way around the laws but nobody suggests that the laws against bank robbing are useless because of the existence of folks like Wille Sutton.
We remind the professor more and more of the failed Viking Greenland colony who starved to death looking out on an ocean of fish because they refused to eat fish for reasons that must have seemed very very important at the time but never really made sense.
And of course there is that blood on our hands.
