I like the word “pernicious.” Webster reckons it means “highly destructive or deadly.” When I hear the word, I think of a mustache-twirling bad guy tying some defenseless babe to railroad tracks. Of course, Nell wouldn’t have depended on Dudley to save her from Snidely’s bondage fetish if she’d had, say, a Glock. Which may be an obscure reference, but it’s plenty apt (IMHO). Check it: “Congress is poised, finally, to give the tax-paying citizens of the District of Columbia what they have been so long and so unfairly denied: a representative with the power to vote, today’s New York Times op ed opines. “But the gun lobby has extracted too high a price: the scuttling of vital local gun controls intended to keep the capital city’s residents safe.” There’s another excellent word: “intended.”
