The Shootout Over Guns

"The Democrats are trying to find a safe middle position without dealing with the controversial gun issue, but I don't know how you can deal with school violence without dealing with guns. There's one common thread throughout all of the violence in this country - and it's the gun."
- U.S. Rep. Bill Clay, Missouri, Summer, 1999

"Atlanta. Skokie. It's about guns."
- Chicago Tribune editorial headline, August 1, 1999

You’re goddam right it’s about guns. When will the killing stop? When we get the guns off the streets, that's when.

An acquaintance of mine tried to tell me that there have always been guns in this country, as if the idea of insane people in society is a new phenomenon. But there have been insane minds much longer than there have been guns - they've just never been able to kill with such ease, such frequency, such randomness and such immediacy before now – without guns.

One of our local U.S. Representatives here in the St. Louis, Bill Clay, got it dead right when he made the statement above and I've got to give him credit for having the balls to speak out in a way that 99% of his co-conspirators in the halls of the U.S. Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are simply too gutless and too greedy to do. In the wake of the recent Atlanta shootings, even longtime Republican standard bearers like the Chicago Tribune are beginning to see the light. Sadly, there will always be money-grubbing holdouts like Jo Ann Emerson, another Missouri Representative, who actually stated that "the whole root cause of what happened at Columbine doesn't have anything to do with easy access to guns."

What an utter imbecile.

Clay's candid assessment is refreshing. And he is right. There are simply too many guns in society. Period. Not "too many in the hands of the wrong people," or "too many in cities;" there are too many guns, period. And it's time we eliminated them…..period. No questions asked.

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“The culture of violence … we teach in music, what we teach in movies, and what we teach in video may degrade the value of life and desensitize us to brutality and death."
- U.S. Senator John Ashcroft, Missouri

There is indeed a single common thread throughout the violence in the country. And it's not insanity, or poor parenting, or music or movies, or a "lack of family values," whatever the hell that means. Or any other excuses that bonehead Ashcroft can dream up. The common thread is guns.

Sadly, we knew this long before Columbine, but did nothing about it.

"I'm sure Mr. Smith was not part of a well-regulated militia."- Mayor John Fernandez, Bloomington, Indiana

The "Mr. Smith" to whom Mayor Fernandez is referring is the madman who roamed the Midwest a few weeks back firing randomly in the Chicago suburb of Skokie and on the campus of Indiana University before finally killing himself. And, of course, the mayor's poignant reference to the true meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wisely opens and, hopefully, closes this debate once and for all.

Yet according to the pro-gun bunch, it says right there in the Constitution that we all get to carry guns, right?

Well, no, it doesn't, though that's the line the NRA and all the other gun freaks have been shoving down our throats for so many years. In fact, a current NRA advertising campaign (a truly strange and sickening idea in and of itself, when you stop to think about it) informs the reader through the words of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne Lapierre, that "our founding fathers often wrote about firearm freedom as an individual right." And that Thomas Jefferson wrote that "no free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." (Well, Jefferson also held slaves, but we've decided that was wrong, too.)

On the subject of guns, Jefferson obviously had a few detractors; enough to keep that line of thinking out of what became in the final analysis, the United States Constitution. Right. In the end, enough logical minds prevailed over two hundred years ago so as to prevent the inclusion of firearms as an individual right in the Constitution.

You say you’re shocked to hear this? You say you’ve always thought the Second Amendment actually did give private individuals the right to bear arms? That's not surprising given how the gun squad has hid behind the Second Amendment in an attempt to mislead the general public.

Let's have a look at what the Second Amendment really 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.

Well, I couldn't agree more. I, too, think our military services should be properly equipped for the sake of national security. And that's what the Second Amendment is really all about.

Twenty-seven words which make it very clear that the idea behind the Second Amendment was to establish a government-sanctioned, properly equipped military for the sake of defending ourselves from enemy nations; not for going around shooting each other.

The NRA twinkies and their disciples have cloaked themselves in this amendment for as long as memory serves. And not once have I heard anyone call them on – until now.

This NRA advertising campaign is, of course, designed to sway those folks who have the audacity to believe that guns actually can – and do – kill people. It's hardly a threat; at least, no more so than other pro-gun tactics taken by the NRA through the years. It features the usual dumb-dumbs; people like actor Tom Selleck, who in his ad for the NRA is described as a "Recreational Shooter." Wow, that's sounds really, really fun.

Of course, king of the gun idiots is actor and NRA President Charlton Heston, who, in the latest ad, claims that the "NRA's National Firearms Museum …. tells the story of human freedom and the American experience…."

A gun museum as the place to absorb American history? What an obscene goon Heston has become.

He's not alone. One particular member of congress who has amazed us with an incredibly blatant and unexplainable act of stupidity is Oklahoma U.S. Congressman J. C. Watts. I had read about the NRA advertisement that features Watts. Yet, if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. It just seemed impossible to fathom. This maneuver is so utterly void of any shred of common sense, it causes one to ponder how in the hell he made it out of his own neighborhood, much less through the doors of the United States Congress.

To date, I've given Watts credit. He's been put on display as the symbol of the "new" Republican Party for more than a few years now and has, since his speech at the '96 convention in San Diego, been a politician of considerable prominence. He's hung in there, unlike that quitter Susan Molinari, who couldn't handle the pressure of being a token female for the likes of what remains of the GOP – the Good Old-boy Party. But this recent blunder is simply too over the top, even for a "to get along go along" freak like Watts.

In his NRA ad, Watts informs us, as have so many Republicans stuck in the pocket of the NRA, that "the second amendment is very dear … that all Americans have the right to bear arms for whatever lawful purpose they choose…."

Oh really? So, congressman Watts, the time has come when we can now start making and living by our own set of laws, the U. S. Constitution be damned?

Watts is quoted in his ad as saying, "I grew up with a healthy respect for guns as a way of life. As American as mom, football and apple pie."

Right. That's the problem, Congressman. Too many kids are also growing up with "guns as a way of life." Sadly, very, very few of them possess "a healthy respect for guns", as it appears you do – an absolutely demented mindset, in and of itself.

Which is why the killing goes on and on and on …

Speaking of politicians, there have been lame attempts at sympathy toward victims by Republicans across the land. The Colorado State legislature, after the Columbine killings suspended a gun control vote out of respect for the victims. Hell, if they had any real nuts, not to mention true conviction in their souls for what they say they believe in, they'd have had that vote; only they new they couldn't have won, the gutless snakes. I say, let them take the vote, lose the vote, then let the pro-gunners lose where it really counts – at the polls.

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What is the answer? As always the simplest answer is the right one. NO MORE GUNS. Right. As in no more guns for public consumption, period.

A God-given right? My ass – no god would be so stupid.

A Second Amendment right? Obviously not, considering the true language of the Amendment.

In my book, The General's New Clothes and Other Myths From Campaign '96, I actually hypothesized that maybe, just maybe, we weren't fit to govern ourselves, as it were, and that the idea of a representative government, though a noble idea, was a failed one, and therefore, a bad one.

Maybe.

But there is no "maybe" with guns. We have time and again demonstrated that as a society, we are simply unfit for gun ownership. Not just kids; adults, too. Hell, adults, especially. Because it's adults that teach kids that guns are good. It's adults that neglect their kids, an act which leads kids – often because of lack of discipline in the home – to do what they've done in all types of communities these past few years. It's adults that stockpile weapons illegally (see David Koresh, Montana Freemen.) It's adults that hide behind their own twisted, distorted, maligned view of the Second Amendment.

Except for use by law enforcement bodies and federally-sanctioned military….NO MORE GUNS. NONE. EVER. AT ALL.

Gun manufacturers? Government contracts only. Sorry, there are too many dead.

Gun collectors? Go buy stamps. Sorry, there are too many dead.

Hunters? Go buy a bow and arrow, and turn hunting into a real sport. Sorry, there are just too many dead.

Naturally, the gun supporters (think about that phrase for a minute - "guns supporters") will view this proposition as insane. Right – about as insane as the idea that guns don't kill.

Those who agree with me will view this as utopia. And of course, it will never come to pass for two simple reasons: politics and money. So let me throw an idea out there that involves money and politics so that everyone on both sides of the fence can understand.

The time has come to install metal detectors in rural and suburban public schools, an inconvenience that urban schools have put up with for years now. And how do we pay for this? "We" don't. Gun owners do. By way of a law that would require any individual who purchases and/or registers a gun of any type to pay a tax designated specifically for the installation of metal detectors in the public schools and universities across the country.

Now there is a challenge for any member of congress who may have the guts and the conviction. The guts of Rep. Bill Clay, in fact – one of the first U.S. Representatives to actually say what needed to be said on this sick issue of guns. Could it be the soon-departing Clay's grand finale? We can only hope so.