Don't Worry, I Will Let This Go Soon Enough

This is all just astonishingly transparent bullshit. Other countries have all of this stuff — the games, the movies, the hurricanes (?!) — and they don’t need an army of armed guards protecting their schools. If these were the causes of school massacres, they’d be a worldwide phenomenon. What the US does have that other countries don’t is a level of gun saturation that far outstrips the rest of the world. For every 100 resident, the US has 88.8 guns. The second highest level of gun saturation in the world is Serbia, with a mere 58.2. We have more guns that everyone and — duh! — it’s not making us any safer. It’s just making everything progressively worse.

And now we have to subsidize this by paying for an literal army of armed school guards? Has anyone noticed that we’re about to go over a freakin’ fiscal cliff? And now we need to add more spending? Besides, how’s that stop things like the Aurora theater massacre? This should absolutely be a nonstarter.

It’s time to get very, very serious about the problem of gun in our society. And step number one is inviting Wayne LaPierre and his soft-on-crime blood lobby/murder club/fear factory to kindly STFU and let the adults handle things from here on out.

“Here’s something you may not realize: Gun ownership has been declining for decades. According to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, in 1977, 54% of American households had guns. By 2010, the number had fallen to 32%. Yet gun sales are at record highs. That means that existing gun owners are buying more and more guns. It’s not enough to have a hunting rifle over your mantle; you need an entire arsenal, just in case the government falls, society disintegrates, and you have to protect your cave — sorry, your home — from the marauding hordes.

That’s exactly what the gun manufacturers want you to think, so you keep buying. They know that hunting will never again be the pastime it once was, and as more Americans move from rural areas to the suburbs and cities, their natural market withers.

That “responsible gun owner” politicians talk about, the one who reverentially passes down to his son the bolt-action rifle his father gave him? That guy isn’t good for business. The manufacturers need the other guy, the one who fears he may not be all the man he could be.”