It’s Gun Control, Stupid!

Another week. Another senseless shooting at a college campus. Another
young man with a history of mental illness--the kid with the
unpronounceable name spent time in a mental institution after high
school because he'd become unmanageable--who is able to simply go
into a gun shop and buy the most lethal weapons available. No real
background check; they only check to see if the person has a criminal
record. Steven Kazmierczak didn't. So he was able to buy a glock
pistol and a shotgun to add to his previous handgun arsenal.

Then he showed up on campus and started to kill geology students at
random.

Now clearly the guy was mentally ill. But I am stunned by the most
common comment: we can't stop this type of thing. We're all
vulnerable. Some crazy wants to do this, it's impossible to stop.

Well yes. Always assuming that the crazy lives in the United States
of America, where morons in the National Rifle Association are able
to gut any meaningful gun control laws by appealing to the
Constitution's Second Amendment. We have a right to bear arms, they
shout. And Charleston Heston takes his stand menacing anyone who
tries to take his gun away--from his "cold, dead hand." They'll have
to kill me first.

No one wants to kill Moses. No legislator is brave enough to
challenge the gun control lobby. So Steven Kazmierczak is able to buy
his guns and blast away. After all, it's his second amendment right.
Is that so? Does the Constitution give Americans, even crazy ones,
the right to shoot randomly, lethally, with the best weaponry
available, at perfect strangers? Apparently so. After all, it's in
the Constitution (though in fact, the Constitution gives the right to
bear arms only to militias).

And Americans say, What can we do? Only a moronic nation would allow
this to go on. Only a nation controlled by idiots would defend the
right of such people to kill. Only a nation steeped in killing itself
would allow its crazies to slaughter innocents and call it freedom.
Will such a nation ever wake up? Learn to read its own founding
document? The signs are not good.

Lawrence DiStasi

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