This County Will Self-Destruct In...

States are passing laws allowing people to carry guns in airports. We're becoming a nation of gun-totin' brown-arrestin' citizenship-revokin' paranoid lunatics. Is this really where we're headed? Wild West justice, hang 'em first and shoot questions later? Vigilantes? Are we finally so destroyed by those guys in caves that we have thrown up our hands and said, "You win?" So frightened, so lacking in confidence that we're just turning on ourselves? Seriously.

Adding injury to insult was a show on PBS, part of which was devoted to the "open carry" movement. Featuring lots of guys walking around with handguns on their hips, it gave fair voice to that side of the argument. Mostly, it's that if you have a gun on your person, you might have an opportunity to prevent a crime. I get that; can't really argue with it, per se. In fact, if I had a gun handy were I to come across someone committing rape, for example, I might just pull it and saying something impolite.

Yet I had a surprisingly visceral reaction to seeing those guys packing so smugly, one of whom had the hammer of his weapon in cocked mode. Maybe it's that it took me back to my days in Vietnam, when, on flying missions, I carried a .38 pistol, per regulation, in my survival vest. Some of the fighter jocks added bandoliers with a couple hundred extra rounds. Me, I figured if I was on the ground in a situation where that much shooting was required, with a bitsy sidearm like that, alone, all I'd need was one bullet.

But I don't think it was that. It was the simpering macho certitude, combined with the showing of pro-gun rallies featuring speakers saying President Obama is the most anti-gun president ever, with signs saying something like, "Yeah, Barry, you can take my gun. Muzzle first." Because, as anyone should know, the only action Obama has taken regarding guns is to loosen regulation of them in national parks. As with many of the policies of this so-called socialist liberal, he's getting hot criticism from his left over his lack of action on gun regulation. So it's not simply that there's a large segment of the population packing heat openly and proudly. It's that they're Fox-fed, RWS™-brained nutjobs. It's that they're proof paranoid of how far back we're falling, based on falsehood.

I know we'll never be crime-free nor gun-free. But I really doubt the guys carrying are thinking much about being crime-fighters. They're getting off on that thing in their pants; they're reveling in the attention they get and the discomfort it causes. It's about intimidation; and people who need to intimidate indiscriminately are not nice people, or healthy.

Because we already have laws allowing concealed carry. You need a permit, though, which open carry, mostly, does not. (Why, after all, would we want to regulate people who need to walk around all gun-hipped?) So it's not about fighting crime. It's about show. It's about in-your-face. And, parenthetically, it's about taking us to a place where the Second Amendment has never gone.

It's like walking around with your dick hanging out, only not as subtle.

My question is this: was it really al Queda that brought us down so easily, so thoroughly, or was it the specter of a Black Guy in the White House? Whichever it is, or whatever combination of the aforementioned, it sure as hell didn't take much to get us to toss it all overboard.