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It's never the time

Lewiston, ME, in better times

The Pastor Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, gave his first national interview last night to Lumpy the Clown, and had this to say about yet another mass shooting:
Ah, yes. The problem is in the human heart, and it's not the time to talk about legislation.

To paraphrase Lieutenant Columbo, here's what I don't understand: other advanced nations, I assume, also have human hearts, yet don't seem to have this peculiarly American problem. And it's not like Sweden and France don't have violent crime; Sweden, in fact, is undergoing such a wave of violent crime, at least for them, that the government changed from left to right in the most recent election as the population grew fed up with it. But even with this rise in crime, Sweden has not suffered over five hundred mass-casualty murders this year. We, on the other hand, have.

And just when is the "right time" for legislation? The fifty-third of NOvember? It seems to me that after every one of these massacres, the usual suspects come out imploring a despondent populace to not politicize the murders. The poor AR-15s will cry tears of hurt if we do. 

Far from being a polite society, an armed society is a society which will, eventually, devolve into what we are now: one composed of atomized individuals, unsure if when they step out of their homes in the morning that they'll return in the evening, avoiding falling prey to whatever random nutcase decides to take out his—and it's always a "he"—rage at the failures of his life on strangers. Somalia is an armed society. So is Afghanistan. I don't see them being lauded as functional polities. 

The Second Amendment is a dead letter. It was created at a time when the country had a small standing army and relied on state militia to supplement it in case of a national emergency. It was also a tool of oppression against recalcitrant slaves and obstreperous Natives. That was two centuries ago. The most powerful nation in world history doesn't need Bubba McGee and his AR-15 to add to the nation's military might.

And, as we've said many times in this space, that same Bubba McGee is not going to fight a "tyrannical government" with his collection of weaponry. One Predator drone would wipe out any concentration of "patriots" deciding to "take back their country."

As always, it comes down to money. The gun lobby spends lavishly to push the sanctity of unfettered gun rights. It buys legislators for pennies on the dollar. (It really is stunning how cheaply even senators go for.) The National Rifle Association went from a group which supported sensible gun regulation to one which considers any gun restrictions as akin to Satanism. Doing so makes them a pretty penny.

One would think that at some point the light would go off. But America is so large, and the massacres so random, that we live with the delusion that it can't happen to us. As a public worker, I know full well that it can. But gun culture has become part of the wider culture war. Even though majorities of voters across party lines favor regulations, they still vote for those who are adamantly opposed. What they tell pollsters is utterly meaningless, empty words made to salve their consciences. 

I really have no words of wisdom. The carnage will continue until at some point America says "enough". But I don't see that we're anywhere near that point yet. So, I will most likely be writing something like this again in a few months, weeks, days. The merry-go-round of Moloch continues.

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