Son of a Gun

--Falling Ifs, Matthew Heller

"You're a business owner, maybe,
and you're kind of pissed about Obama?
Take the bumper stickers off your car,
and no more sharing in the employee break room.
And no goddamn talking about the Rapture
ever, ever again.

"Are we clear? Because if you don't listen to me,
the only places we'll be competitive
are districts composed solely of people
who plan to shoot someone within the next 30 minutes
and actual Confederate veterans.   
Mostly northern Florida I guess."
--Karl Rove to the GOP: "Please, Please Stop Talking,
Goblinbooks 

 What [the Arab Spring] really means is
the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood
across the region
--Gerard de Villiers
 _________________________

Mr. Goblinbooks has a good sense of things in this neck o' the woods.

Let us talk about gun control here in the good ole Homeland.

So we're gonna do it: No more high-capacity magazines for civilians and ban assault rifles (even though they are not assault rifles).  The manufacturers will eliminate the flash suppressors, the bayonet lugs and the extendible stocks, and everything will be copacetic.  However, you will have the very same rifle, minus the bells and whistles -- what is euphemistically called a "Post-ban rifle".  Now we will all be much safer ... don't you feel better?

Meanwhile, after the love-fest, the United States still lurks near the bottom of the life expectancy scale among industrial nations, despite the fact we spend more for personal health care.  Removing bayonet lugs will not solve that problem.

We suffer tobacco-related death, aggressive and oblivious drivers, alcohol-related death and the myriad of death by stupidity but what do we do?  We focus on 10-round magazines and military look-alike rifles.  Perhaps this is because eliminating the stupid is a lot harder than regulating weapons.

And this is what passes for leadership in America.