Teachable Moment

So now that another tedious, utterly useless Prom Night has come and gone, and we have judiciously observed the meaningless rituals of political comity and kumbafuckingyah, whatever and ever, amen, let us propose a simple observation: somehow this thrashing dinosaur of a nation managed to go three solid weeks of fulminating endlessly about the motivations and ramifications of a deranged idiot slaughtering a crowd at a supermarket.

But I'll be damned if I heard anyone discuss even the possibility of devising some sort of system that might prevent said idiots from just lurching down to the nearest sporting goods shop, and purchasing a Glock and an extended 30-round clip, no questions asked, no nothin'.

Look, I like guns, I believe in the Second Amendment. I own guns, I know how to use them, and pretty much everyone else here in Alabama, California does as well. And it would certainly be unfair to punish the vast majority of responsible gun owners for the actions of a few deranged individuals. But that is quite a different matter than the insistence that everyone, regardless of temperament, should have equal access to them. I like cars, too, but I get that not everyone is capable of operating them (indeed, there seem to be more willfully reckless, stupid drivers than ever). Even an easy-to-pass test is better than no test at all.

Let's go out on a fragile limb and state categorically that a reasonable competency test is a handy, if certainly not foolproof, device to weed at least some of the yobbos out, provide at least some obstacle to mental patients. Of course this would also require a registration system, or maybe just a "moving forward" registration system, which would still leave some quarter-billion weapons out there free and clear. Not much to worry the NRA's purty little mouths about, but might actually prevent the next ward-o'-the-state from shooting up your nine-year-old at a fucking Safeway.

Before we know it, another "national tragedy" will take place, as it inevitably does. Someone will hole up in his mother's living room and take out a few cops, or they'll go public and shoot up a college campus, a shopping mall, whatever. And we'll have our public rituals, then go right back to what we were doing. It seems to be tacitly accepted as the cost of doing business or something. As long as it isn't us, or someone we care about, served up as target practice for the next lunatic asshole with an incoherent axe to grind. It should be a national embarrassment that volatile goofballs are allowed such easy access to such dangerous firepower, and predictably take out groups of innocents with such appalling regularity.

But because we and our betters in the beltway media are much more concerned with ceremonial pretenses of commonality, it is not even suggested. Nor will it be, until one of their asses gets blown apart by the next desert Pupkin.