Guns are American as baby mommas and McDonalds' apple pies. Every politician, right or left, is scared of death of the backlash from their constituents if they ever enacted real gun control. It is what it is, and as I predicted shortly after Sandy Hook, 20 dead children will not change a thing. Yes, Amurricans care more about their AK-47's and they do Lil' Timmy. Deal with it.
I'm not huge fan of CNN's Piers Morgan, but I give him credit for the frequency of gun control discussion he's held on his nightly show in recent weeks. Backlash against Morgan has been so severe that people organized a petition to have him deported, and a raging right wing talk show host essentially challenged him to a fistfight on TV earlier this week.[1] Last night, he has some wacko from Breitbart.com on, and oddly, I found myself agreeing with the Wacko. Somewhat.
The guy actually has a point here.[2] The media as a whole (and the White House for that matter) doesn't really give two sh*ts about urban crime and the thousands of people of color who kill themselves each year. These are indeed usually carried out with illegally obtained handguns, not assault rifles. The fact that politicians and media types can be moved to (token) action only one a(n admittedly tragic) school shooting (momentarily) tips the scales of public opinion says a lot about this country and what those who run find important. Which is why this whole gun control debate has me a little conflicted. There's also the niggling thought that since I now have a daughter, I suddenly find myself interested in at least learning how to maintain and properly use a firearm. Don't ask why this instinct didn't kick in two sons ago. I don't know myself.
That said, obviously something should be done. There's no reason why anyone who isn't in law enforcement or the military needs a gun capable of firing 5 rounds per second. None whatsoever. But banning the manufacturing of new assault rifles also won't so anything to reel in the millions of them already in circulation. Unless you're talking confiscation (and trust me, no politician would even utter such words) you're simply taking one bullet out of the proverbial loaded chambed and leaving the rest. And oh yeah, you're still pretending urban crime doesn't even exist.
So yeah, big ball of confusion here. What do ya'll think?[3]
Question: What, if anything, can this country do to curb the recent spate of mass shootings? Does the level of sudden interest in gun control seem a bit hypocritical given the persistence of violent gun crimes in "urban areas"?
[1] No, I don't watch CNN or Piers Morgan. I have 3 children. And thus, I have no free time. I catch up on all this stuff via Mediaite. Get familiar.
[2] It would help if his point about "urban gun control" was actually genuine, as opposed to a clear attempt to discredit the President with a little covert racism tossed in for good measure. Seriously, when did Conservatives start giving a sh*t about black on black murder in Chicago? I don't remember them saying much when Negroes were killing each other at Call Of Duty frequency back in the 00's.
[3] Forgive the typos in this post. I'm sure there's plenty of them, as well as grammatical errors. Blogger's "new and improved" interface still doesn't have spellcheck. Boooooo.
