In the aftermath of Newtown, I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard the gun lobby and its minions say, in effect, "don't make gun policy when you're emotional", or "emotional decision making leads to bad policies"; something to that effect.

It was only with the Newtown shooting that I realized that that argument is always put forth in the aftermath of a horrendous mass shooting. It's a stalling, diversionary tactic. The public's attention span dwindles as the raw anger, horror, and nausea begins to subside. It's worked pretty well for the NRA. So far.

(This 'emotion' argument reminds me an old Bogart movie: slapping an hysterical dame across the face and saying "get a hold of yourself. You're hysterical". The NRA's insinuation is just as ugly and patronizing. And it only comes from males ....

I never once heard, in any of Marc's posts, anything but a cold rationale for why the weapons in question should not be banned. "Automatic" vs. "Semi-automatic" (yes, I've been upbraided by gun owners for not knowing the difference: a difference that undoubtedly means less than zero to te parents of twenty dead children.

Had Marc once shown the slightest bit of empathy or concern for the families whose lives are ruined forever, my assertion that he has a stone cold heart might have been tempered. I said it then and I say it again: I pity anyone whose humanity is so far in their rear view mirror that they are incapable to generating an ounce of human feeling for the shocked and horrified people of Newtown, Aurora, and a few dozen other places.

I do not, and I cannot understand personally, what America's unique and peculiar obsession with firearms is. I understand it as a cultural myth: westerns, pioneers, hunters, soldiers. We grew up with heavily romanticized myths about them all. And we never outgrew those myths.

The attachment to guns seems to me, in this latest round of debates, to be generating lots of rationales about 'the government' and the, apparently in some deluded, paranoid minds, imminent confiscation of weapons and the imposition of socialism. Kind of a 'Red Dawn' adolescent fantasy.

Meanwhile the NRA who, as near as I can tell, is really only the marketing division of Smith and Wesson bends the facts and stats ... alright, lies .. and hides behind the Constitution to keep the gun money flowing.

Up until now the American public has silently gritted their teeth and accepted the ever more frequent mall, theater, school ______________ (insert your venue here) shootings as the cost of doing business and prayed God it didn't happen to anyone they knew or cared about.

The 'inanimate object' argument (the 'spoon/gun analogy') is, as Reg pointed out, laughable at best. Following that logic it doesn't really matter if every man, woman, and child in the nation possesses a flame thrower, a rocket launcher, or a neutron bomb .. all inanimate objects by the way ... like a spoon.

So thanks Joe. Blessed are the Peacemakers. I'm sure Marc is sincere, and sincerely believes what he is saying, at least some of the time. I don't get it. I don't own a gun. I never will. I am not afraid of the government taking over. I am increasingly wary of malls, movie theaters, churches, and large gatherings of strangers. This is the country we have made for ourselves. I am not content with the way it is. There is a change coming. Like the abolition of slavery, like Prohibition, like the Civil Rights Act, the change will be slow, and many more people will die ridiculous, unwarrented sudden death before America is ready to abandon its role as the dangerous armed child of the Western world and join the 21st Century, a program already in progress.