FREEDOM TO SHOOT

DIGGING DEEPER

By Ivan G. Goldman

Last April Gov. Jan Brewer signed loony legislation making Arizona the third state to allow people to carry a concealed weapon without requiring a permit. Proponents claimed this would make everyone safer.

No operator’s license, no sanity test, no rules.

Before the last election Sarah Palin's Facebook page carried a map featuring 20 gun sights, one for each of the Democrats targeted this year by her political action committee. The committee also circulated a matching poster. One of those targeted was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, shot in the skull today by one of those lone gunmen enabled by Brewer, Palin, and other lesser lights of their ilk. The geek shooter was aided and supported by the wide-open gun laws demanded and secured by the cowardly gun freaks who dictate our laws on firearms, such as they are.

Brewer said she was shocked, saddened, etc. by the events at a Tucson shopping center. Apparently her brain is unable to process two thoughts simultaneously, so she’s unable to see any connection between the maniacal wide-open gun legislation she so joyously celebrated and this event. House Speaker John Boehner, another friend of gun crazies, issued a statement saying he was “horrified” by the shooting. As I write there are six confirmed deaths and 13 confirmed wounded, Giffords among the latter.

When Lee Oswald assassinated John Kennedy in 1963 he got off three shots with a bolt action rifle. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons were much harder to get in those days, but now you can find them at any gun show, and the gun shows are protected from any meaningful supervision. Although selling fully automatic weapons remains illegal, sleazy geeks behind the tables at those "shows" will gladly show you how to easily convert their semi-automatic weapons to fire on full automatic.

If you’re not familiar with such weapons, a semi-automatic requires you to pull the trigger for each shot. When you press the trigger on an automatic it will pour out rounds until you run out of ammo. And if you have spare magazines you can quickly slip in another clip and resume murdering innocents. Such weapons have nothing to do with hunting. They are designed to kill lots of people.

The bolt action weapon used by Oswald required the shooter to manually reload the chamber for each shot by pulling back the bolt. Guns are getting much better, but people aren’t, and gun laws are much, much worse. In fact, our Roberts Supreme Court told us in a landmark ruling against the city of Chicago, that it’s unconstitutional for a local government to ban firearms.

Possibly this new bloody spectacle will spark sanity in our gun laws, but we’ve already had dozens and dozens of students gunned down by crazies inside their schools, and if those very preventable tragedies can’t make a difference, it’s difficult to see why this one would do the trick. Gun loons still sit on the Supreme Court, and politicians know that they can support gun insanity at no cost, but if they oppose it they will be handing a ton of money and votes to their opponents.

At this point we don’t know the details, but with so many wounded we can assume some of the Tucson victims will be crippled physically, and more than a few will be badly injured emotionally. Those flesh wounds from the old cowboy movies are rarer in real life. Bullets shatter bones, create blood poisoning, and ruin organs, making them never quite work the way they used to. I doubt any of the Tucson victims or their families will be celebrating the laws, unique among the civilized nations, that guarantee crazies in our republic the right to own and carry these terrible weapons.