You're kidding me, right? We just sit here like patsies and let the gun nuts tell us we're not allowed to protect ourselves from the next James Holmes?
We know there will be a next one, because we know there was a Jared Lee Loughner, a George "Jo Jo" Pierre Hennard, a Mark David Chapman, a John W. Hinckley Jr., a Sarah Jane Moore, a Lynette Fromme, a Lee Harvey Oswald, a Charles Guiteau.
It comes around on a regular cycle, like a bell tolling. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, unless you're a moron. You know damned well for whom it tolls. For you, for me, for our loved ones next time we dare go to a movie, eat in a restaurant, or, God forbid, exercise any kind of public leadership or carry out any sort of public performance.
They're nuts. Crazy. Deranged. It doesn't matter what kind of fake-political jibber-jabber does or does not come out of their mouths. If it were politically correct for psychiatrists to make the little round-and-round sign with their fingers next to their temples, they would all make the little round-and-round sign after hearing about four sentences from the mouths of any of these people.
We all get the problem. The guy in Colorado is going to turn out to be another one-off homicidal crazy case. And we all know that no kind of government or police agency can know ahead of time when one of these guys is going to develop like an ugly cyst somewhere on the body politic.
Our various levels of government can barely protect us from people with dodgy passports who take flying lessons and make inquiries about purchasing large amounts of fertilizer. We can barely protect ourselves from people who try to light their shoes on fire on airplanes.
There is not one damned thing anybody can do to single out ahead of time the lone grad student locked in the privacy of his room going slowly mad, plunging deeper and deeper into reveries of blood.
The way you catch him is when, like Holmes, he orders an arsenal of guns, ammo and body armor over the Internet in a two-month period. That's a red flag. That we can see.
But the gun-nut lobby tells us we're not allowed to notice, not allowed to keep track, not allowed to devise a system that will set off some alarm bells when the crazy grad student starts ordering huge amounts of ammo. We have to look the other way when he starts building an arsenal big enough to take down a small nation.
Why? Why are we not allowed to protect ourselves from this kind of atrocity? Don't give me that constitutional bullshit. OK, so the Constitution says we have the right to bear arms. So everybody go ahead and bear arms. I do.
But what is the reason for forbidding law enforcement from keeping tabs on people who are building up nutcase arsenals? Hey, I think we all know the answer to that one too.
Some people, the National Rifle Association in particular, preach this line that we need to be able to stockpile assault weapons in case we decide to overthrow our own government. The government is not allowed to protect us from nutcase arsenals, because it's not allowed to protect itself.
The NRA loves arsenals. Here's a quote from a recent NRA press release: "The National Rifle Association and Arsenal, Inc. announced today the launch of a new commemorative Jubilee Series AK-74 Kalashnikov rifle developed by Arsenal, Inc. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these rifles will be donated to the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and the Kalashnikov Foundation."
And what is the argument in favor? It's all this twisted paranoid criminal-mentality crap about how we all need to have our own arsenals in case the Obama socialists try to load us on trains and take us to work camps. They deliberately ignore the fact that Obama has been the best friend gun-owners ever had.
They need the paranoia. They fan the fear. Who knows what the ultimate goal is really? I could suggest they're getting paid off by the guns and ammo makers, but that assumption has to be too simple. We should give the gun and ammo makers more credit. They're American citizens too. They can't think it's worth a Colorado movie massacre every few years to amp up sales.
No, I think the whole gun-nut theme in American culture is darker than mere financial self-interest, closer to evil itself. The people who run the NRA are a lot closer to James Holmes in the way they think than they are to anybody else.
On the other hand, evil is always with us. But what do you say about a people who won't or can't defend themselves against it? That's what we should really be thinking about. What stops us from putting a stop to this?
