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We’ve hung with Lenny before. Uh, maybe that wasn’t the right word; our previous post on Mr. Pitts focused on his theory that gun owners are under-equipped in the penis department. So let’s just say the gun grabber’s been on our gaydar—I mean radar before. This time out, the Lenster has something to say about Arizona rep Gabrielle Giffords’ firearms-related resignation. “Somehow, people who should never have guns never have trouble getting them,” Pitts proclaims at tennessean.com. “Jared Lee Loughner, the man now in jail for the Tucson massacre, was able legally to obtain a gun despite the fact that he was a mentally deranged man who had been rejected by the U.S. Army and kicked out of a community college, which suggests that, while Loughner may be unbalanced, American gun laws are downright insane.” But wait! There is an answer!
We need meaningful background checks on all gun purchases — no loopholes. A mentally unstable man should not have legal access to a gun, period.
We need to ban fully automatic weapons from private use. We need to encourage gun safety classes so that poorly secured firearms stop ending up in the hands of little children.
At the very least, we need to have a serious national dialogue about possible solutions.
Speaking of holes, Lenny’s facile (if suitably indignant) suggestions have that Swiss cheese thing going on.
Define “mentally unstable.” While Loughner was crackers, where do you draw the line between the millions of Americans on anti-depressants and a genuine “nut job”? And what provision would you make for people who recover from mental illness?
How do gun safety classes prevent poorly secured firearms ending up in the hands of little children? Where’s the statistical evidence proving that training would decrease the number of childhood firearms accidents? Is that even worth doing, given the statistically insignificant number of children affected?
Why should we have a national dialogue about possible solutions when gun control advocates are unwilling to consider options other than gun control? We know why they [supposedly] hunger for a theoretical pow-wow: gun grabbers want to appear to be reasonable so they can put forward “common sense” solutions.
Too many on the political left still seem to harbor a fantasy of getting rid of all guns and refuse to distinguish between responsible gun owners and those criminals or deranged people who have no business with firearms. Too many on the political right still harbor the paranoid delusion that any talk of gun control is code for confiscation by jackbooted thugs riding black helicopters.
So nobody talks. Nobody listens. Meantime, our unwillingness to get serious about an epidemic of gun violence brings us the equivalent of 11 Columbine massacres every week — three 9/11s every year. Every once in a while, it even overturns an election. The carnage goes on, and on.
And sadly, that, too, reflects the people’s will.
And human nature. And the cost of freedom.