Thirty-Five Times a Day

Of course, the current paranoia, fueled by the loads of vitriol from tea party enthusiasts like Sarah Palin and Fox News liars like Glenn Beck, leads to this violent political climate that all the commentators are talking about since Jared Lee Loughner’s rampage last Saturday in Tucson, AZ.

Of course, it is dangerous when Sarah Palin evokes war-related metaphors to rally the troops during the midterm elections, when she encourages them to “reload” in the political combat against the progressives. Reload, as in reloading one’s firearm. This is intentional. …

Of course, it is likewise dangerous when the same Palin — Mama Grizzly of the tea party — “targets” 20 elected Democrats to defeat, placing crosshairs on their districts, just as a shooter sees through the scope of his firearm. Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic senator struck down Saturday, was one of the 20 targets on Palin’s list.

Dangerous because in a nation of 200 million or more guns, this could push some crackpot toward the act itself.

The question is whether Jared Lee Loughner, by all accounts mentally ill, was inspired by the violent and paranoid lingo of the Becks and Palins when he acted on Saturday.

I doubt it.

Loughner’s YouTube messages before the crime are a bunch of nonsensical declarations, rantings about governmental control of the people (through grammar, among other things), about the fact that each person is the treasurer of his own currency (?) and about Loughner’s own incomprehensible definition of “terrorist.”

Those who knew Loughner speak of a troubled guy. And troubling fact: The college he attended expelled him last fall on account of his threatening and unpredictable behavior. It was suggested that he undergo psychiatric tests if he wanted to be readmitted.

Somehow, I wish that people would talk about guns as much as the infamous toxic environment. For our southern neighbor of 300 million people, there are 200 million firearms. Take away babies, young children, prisoners and disabled senior citizens, and that makes lots of guns per square foot. …

That is why each day — each day! — 35 people are killed by firearms in the U.S. (not including suicides).

Buying a weapon in the United States — any weapon, even a machine gun — is done so easily, it is disconcerting. I am talking about the legal purchase of arms, not to mention purchases off the black market. …

All this, thanks to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees its citizens the right to bear arms. This right is fiercely defended by the NRA, a rich and powerful lobby, which faithfully reminds us that it is people, not guns, that kill.

But when crazy people can easily purchase weapons, what does that give us?

It gives us killings such as those in Tucson.

It gives us 35 people killed each day, and 13,000 killed each year.

It gives us Columbines and Virginia Techs, massacres both large and small, at schools, at restaurants, at post offices, in the developed country with the greatest number of murders annually.

The problem has to do with access to guns; the problem, if you will, is that a 22-year-old kid gets himself a semi-automatic Glock 19, loaded with 31 bullets, just as easily as you would buy a cookbook from Amazon.com. The problem is that the psycho always has, in his mind, a very good reason to use the weapon. His wife left him. His boss let him go. The United Nations wants to impose a global government. The professors at his former school persecuted him. Whatever.

The dark irony in the Tucson drama? Rep. Giffords was right in line with her state, Arizona, one of the most permissive regarding the right to bear arms. She was, as they say down there, a “strong gun advocate.” In other words, Giffords was opposed to gun control.