The United States of America does two things admirably well: Scare people and convince people to buy—or buy into—crap they don’t need. Now, of course, those two things are linked because scared people tend to shop more, watch more scary movies to get more scared, and demand the government DO SOMETHING. Of course, this is a scam; we all know this. But the American people tend to want the government to do things and, paradoxically, then whine later about all these taxes and laws.
Excuse me, but new taxes and laws don’t suddenly manifest from the forehead of Mount Rushmore in some quasi-mythic birth of government mandates. No, what happens is people get scared, they feel action is necessary, and so they rush to Federal Foolishness, LLC for the so-called solutions. Since when does the progenitor of the entire set of problems than have the solutions? It’s almost like asking a kid that flunked grade school math to do calculus. Of course, in today’s America, the kid does not “flunk” math, he gets a gold star because we don’t want to injure his self-esteem.
I saw another gem of editorial skillfulness in yesterday’s daily birdcage liner and boot-cleaner. That would be the Tucson newspaper, a pulp diaper only a slight step above the clumsy, drunken oaf of an independent newspaper so pathetic they have to give it away free. Even then it remains unwanted. However, it actually does serve a purpose: Packing material for all of the Tucson. Oh, and ads for the various head shops and bong purveyors in town, since it goes without saying the only way to read the woefully scribbled rag is after a bong hit that would fell Paul Bunyan. Anyway, in this paper, there was an editorial from another, you called it, “concerned” woman of no mean dramatic flair. Now that I gave away who wrote it, I am certain you can guess what it was about. Correct! Gun control!
It took several organic, artisanal ham-fisted paragraphs of guffaw-inducing, fake maudlin whining to finally arrive at the point. It was almost like taking Pacific Coast Highway to get from Santa Barbara to Big Sur—by skateboard. The point was: We need background checks on firearms sales. Really?! Seriously?! Lady, did you bother to do ANY research on that at all?! Because if you had, then you’d know there already are background checks on firearms sales. It’s the government you’re begging to “do something” that hands out guns to people without background checks. How do you think the Syrian Civil War got off the ground?
What really added to the hilarity of this poorly informed whiner was how her dad taught them “gun safety” but never kept a gun in the house. Oh, right, it goes without saying. All these people know people that owned guns, or owned guns themselves. They almost sound like people trying to hide their own bigotry: “Why I’ve even had gun owners in my house! I’ve sat down next to a gun owner once!” Hey, lady, the key point in writing fiction is not to smear it on too thick as far as character believability unless you’re doing a comic book. Oh, I’m sorry, you were writing for our local paper. It is a comic book.
There have been so many clamors for gun control in this waste of fine trees that this newspaper doubles as a bucket to carry water for the Democratic Party. Not that they won’t carry water for John McCain when he needs it. Or the Pentagon and Military-Death Complex when the “good jobs” at Davis-Monthan AFB and Raytheon need water brought up from the well of insanity. I mean, how can you run an article whining about “gun violence” and then three pages later, sit there in another article and gloat about the “effectiveness” (kill ratio) of a new missile and all the snazzy jobs that missile will provide to Tucson? Maybe you jokers better go find out how many innocent people the United States government has killed.
Right, who will save us from “gun violence”? I’m curious. What do you call what happened in France? Was that “truck violence”? No, I get why you are calling it “gun violence”. Because that makes it sound like guns are the reason for it. Thus, the solution is “doing something” about guns. Pardon me, but both the San Bernardino and Orlando terrorist attacks are the fruits of getting involved in the Syrian Civil War. That’s not “gun violence”, dummies. That is political violence using terrorism as the vehicle to demonstrate it. The same with the cop shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. That is political violence using terrorism as the vehicle to demonstrate it. I know a bit about vehicles used for violence. They fly overhead here every day. And, by the way, those are “good jobs” for the civilians that keep that base running. I know this because the liberal newspaper here and liberal city government assure me it is so.
Oh, come on now, Jack, this simply goes too far! We have to defend ourselves! Oh, is that so? But not individual citizens who don’t have the luxury of calling an airstrike in on their own house to foil a home invasion robbery. No, they don’t have that right. They shouldn’t own guns. Only the government should own guns. After all, they have proven themselves to be responsible gun owners, having slathered weapons across the entire Middle East. Does anyone remember the United States government is in possession of roughly 2,600 operational nuclear weapons? That we know of. There could be more. And there will be soon, from what I have heard. Who, in their right mind, is going to attack us in such a fashion that we would actually be threatened in terms of national survival?
What about terrorists?! What, our government, you mean? Oh! Right! The “Big T” Terrorists. Gee, I bet al-Qaida and ISIS both will be thwarted by some “common sense gun laws”! I can hear them now: “Gosh, since they passed the Think Of The Kids Crime Bill gun control laws, we can’t seem to mount an effective attack on the Great Satan! I guess we’ll just have to deliver pizzas now for a living and close down ISIS, Inc. before the bank finds out…” Come on, man! What, some bull crap gun ban is going to stop an ISIS truck bomb? France has some pretty nifty gun laws, I understand. How’d those work out for them?
If there are to be more “background checks”, they need to happen with United States government weapons transactions and covert operations. “They can’t be covert if everyone knows!” Exactly! So we need background checks not on us, but on this cabal of lunatics we call the government. They’re the ones doling out weapons to people that then created a civil war that spilled into our own streets twice now. Oh, those were Americans and not Syrians? Excuse me, but the government was throwing muskets into the hands of Irish immigrants right off the boat in our own Civil War. And they didn’t even know what the war was about half the time! So don’t give me this crap that those two attacks were not the Syrian Civil War spilling over into the lap of the government that helped provoke it.