Flea Wags Dog

I know it's early, but I have a strong candidate for my Arizona Republic headline of the year:

"Biden, NRA find little consensus...neither yields in White House meeting."

See, because Americans are so damn good at shooting each other, much better than all of those second rate, socialist countries that we despise, we have to have meetings at the highest levels of the government and with all concerned parties to try and figure out a way to maybe slow down the slaughter of the innocents a little bit. Or at the very least make it somewhat more difficult. More "sporting" if you will..

And the NRA, as one of the chief funding mechanisms of the Republican Party, is obviously a concerned party, with all the attendant thoughts and proposals that concerned parties have.

Now, because I don't have to be as polite as, say, Vice President Biden, my first response was "who gives a fuck what the NRA thinks?"

Because, hey, I already know what the NRA thinks: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." And "lots of guns good--more guns better!" "From my cold dead hands", etc etc.

The NRA, after all, is a lobbying organization whose chief goal is to enrich the gun manufacturers of the world. If they could figure out a way to get .50 caliber machine guns into the hands of each freedom loving, Second Amendment defending American, they would gladly do it. Imagine the profit margin on a machine gun!  Just the thought of it, and the nice rewards he would get from its manufacturers must make Wayne "A Gun Is A Tool--And So Am I" LaPierre all gooey inside.

What I didn't realize, though, is that apparently the NRA is also an equal branch of the government.

They not only get a seat at the table, they get to dictate policy! At least for their Republican underlings. And the handful of Democrats that act like they were Republicans, of course. You know who you are.

See, according to the NRA, when Madison, Jefferson, Mason, Hamilton and the rest were drawing things up, they wanted the guys who represented the flintlock manufacturers to have a say in how many and what kind of flintlocks each free white male could own.

Everybody knows that. My God, the right to bear arms is the sole basis of our freedom. And blah, blah, blah...

Here's the deal: assault rifles and 30 clip pistols are not for hunting or self defense. They are for killing lots of people as quickly as possible. The folks who feel they need them for protection, especially from the Feds, are mentally defective in some fundamental way. Paranoid, delusional, psychopathic--pick one. They have a deep seated fear of "the other" of "them."

If you want to blame it on video games, fine. But make sure you blame the Bible, too. It's full of violence, especially the Old Testament. And let's not forget Shakespeare. Somebody is getting murdered every time you turn the page. When you get right down to it we are a barbarous species. And we should never make it easier for us to indulge our killing instinct.

Hey, here's an idea for a TV reality show: let all the assault rifle lovin', Black Helicopter fearing, Federal 'gubmint' hating, minority despising homophobes buy all the AR-15's and ammo that they want, send them up to Idaho and let's see how long they last against a couple of platoons of Marines with air support. If the Marines are busy elsewhere, just send a couple of drones.

Good clean fun for the whole family. Make that Hillbilly Hand Fishin' show look like a bunch of inbred, genetic mutants. Oh, wait...