I don't think Charleton Heston coined this crack. He liked it, though. He said it to Michael Moore in "Bowling for Columbine." He had that mindless and sightless look some people have, when they're spouting slogans, and what they're saying is either uncivilized or out of the realm of reality. He was talking, of course, about his attachment to his guns. Heston was the spokesperson for the NRA. He might have been its president.
In case you don't know, Moore's conclusion in "...Columbine" is that Americans have an atypical (in the world, or at least among allegedly civilized countries) attachment to guns, and one of the results of that attachment is an abnormally high rate of episodes of gun violence, including murder. Columbine was the poster incident for Moore's exploration of the topic.
I don't think it's disputable that Americans whack each other a lot with guns. I have no idea why, and Moore couldn't figure it out, either. If it's something to do with a frontier mentality, we are unusual in not having gotten over it. Canadians, who have the same story to tell as we do, are not obsessed with guns and assaulting each other as we are. We own this land, from sea to shining sea, as they say, and we have nothing much else to prove. All of the countries I know about had frontier adventures at one time or another in their histories, too, but they don't still look at the territory they claim, or their neighbors, as hostile and asking for combat. So it's hard to think it's that.
Then, of course, there's the good old Second Amendment. This is the biggest scam of all time. For the record, let me quote what the Second Amendment says. It says "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." This is the Second Amendment. I did not summarize it or paraphrase it. Think about this. Does the country depend on a militia, well-regulated or otherwise, for its security? No. Is our government going to call upon us as untrained and uninitiated individuals, to collect our guns and come out to fight someone? No. If you have a gun, and the government calls you to bring it with you to the middle east, so you can attack Iran or someplace, would you go? No. The Second Amendment is a joke at this point in our history. It is completely anachronistic. It is irrelevant and meaningless.
The elephant in the room, so to speak, is gun control. It's clear gun owners are out of control, so will the government control gun ownership? The fact is, it already does. You can't have a tank, or a bazooka, or a hand grenade, even if you really want one. All we're talking about is assessing how we're doing, and maybe realizing the constraints are still a bit too loose. Personally, I'm glad my neighbors don't have tanks, or bazookas, or hand grenades. They're just too dangerous. So are handguns. Do they make some people feel secure, or powerful? Yes, apparently they do. Are they fun, if you want to shoot targets? So it seems. Do they help you overpower an animal you either couldn't catch or couldn't kill on your own? They do.
But look around. Wake up and smell the coffee, as they say. It's been one massive disaster after another, and now it's a bunch of young children at a school in Connecticut. The guns the murderer used, two pistols and a semi-automatic rifle, were registered to his mother. Whatever that's about. Did she need two pistols and a semi-automatic rifle? I can't see how she did, and she's now dead because of it. And so is her son. And so are 25 other innocent people. I guess by now someone has pried the guns out of Adam Lanza's cold, dead hands.
Regular people shouldn't have guns. They don't need them, they mostly don't even use them, and guns are dangerous. They are problems, or disasters, waiting, and begging, to happen. So surprise. We have another disaster.
Isn't it time?
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