Enough already…

My first feeling was outrage.  My second thought had something to do with the NRA.  My third notion was that maybe I should wait a few days before writing a blog about the murder of a whole kindergarten class in Connecticut.

I thought it would be unseemly in the wake of this slaughter of innocents to immediately begin carping about gun control, the idiocy of arming morons with weapons that are solely intended to murder large numbers of people in the most efficient manner possible, and the lack of morality so blatantly exhibited by the NRA and those who cheer its outrages.

And then I saw this…

Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, wasted no time trying to pin Friday’s shooting on gun control advocates. Think Progress quoted a statement of his that read, in part: “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to ensure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones.”

And this…

Recently the Michigan House of Representatives passed and sent to the governor a bill that, among other things, makes it easy for people to carry concealed weapons in schools. After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday, a spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger said that it might have meant “the difference between life and death for many innocent bystanders.”

And this…

Mike Huckabee preached…since prayer is banned from public schools, “should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

So, I decided to join this questionably elite company and scribble my own thoughts.

It’s too late to put the Genie back in the bottle.  There are too many guns in the hands of too many people to think that more effective gun control laws would have prevented the latest slaughter.

The Supreme Court has, for the foreseeable future, blocked any attempt to limit these weapons of mass destruction.  And anyone who doesn’t think that the hands of the five ultra conservative Supremes aren’t bloodied by the Sandy Hook carnage wreaked on Friday needs a refresher course in human relations.

There are too many politicians who rely on the NRA and its minions who support them.  And as long as the House remains gerrymandered in favor of Republicans, no meaningful legislation will emerge.

Our President is not without blame.  In 2008 he promised to deal with the unfettered sales of instruments of death at gun shows and the hideousness of assault weapons.  But we were instead blessed with laws permitting guns on Amtrak and in our national parks.  At least the crazies won’t have to worry about leaving their AK47s at home when they take the train to Yosemite.

This morning Dianne Feinstein told Meet the Press that she was finishing up a bill to ban assault weapons.  So as not to offend, some 800 weapon types will be grandfathered in as will those currently in the hands of people like Adam Lanza.

Perhaps most depressing is the country’s willingness, no, its support of guns and gun enthusiasts.  One Gallup poll reveals that 50% of fellow citizens are satisfied with the current slap-on-the hand gun control laws.  Another Gallup poll sadly reports that a majority feels no need to ban the private ownership of assault weapons.

Yes,  I know that the mental health of these killers is surely a contributing factor to the carnage.  Yes, we should do something to improve the identification of and provision of help to them.  But disturbed people without access to rapid fire, high-capacity guns is surely a whole lot better than the alternative.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of people get slaughtered weekly in the Middle East.  We say, ho-hum, another day at the office.  So, as a reward for our wild-west, every man for himself, frontier mentality, maybe it’s our turn in the barrel.  A slow, but steady, progression of accepting the violent death of innocent bystanders as just another day’s work in protecting and expanding the rights of gunslingers.

Regrettably, maybe it’s best that we throw up our hands, let the anger pass, get back to business as usual, and just forget about doing anything meaningful to stop this insanity.

Then again, if we say ho-hum, what will we tell the kids who were not murdered in Sandy Hook.  What will we tell them when they ask “am I safe?”  How will we explain to them that we did nothing?  That we accepted the murders of their playmates as just one of those things.

No, enough already.