Spare the Rod, Give the Kid a Gun

Last week we heard the story of a 5 year old Kentucky boy accidentally killing his baby sister with a rifle that his parents bought him for his birthday.  Just yesterday the story came out about a 13 year old boy in Florida accidentally shooting his 6 year old sister playing Hide-and-Seek.  All of this comes on the heels of the Senate's failure to pass a Background Check bill, and emboldened efforts by the NRA to arm every man, woman, child, cat, dog, and goldfish with an AK-47.

Red Dawn for the Gun Nuts

Remember the move “Red Dawn”? Not the crap-tastic waste of film they put out last November, but the original 1984 version. It starred Patrick Swayze and a young Charlie Sheen as leaders of a group of teens who fight off invading Soviet forces. The movie is pretty much a wet-dream for conservative hawks and right wing conspiracy theorists (Glenn Beck probably stores it with his porn collection). It’s just the kind of fantasy scenario that gun-nuts are absolutely obsessed with, the fantasy of fighting an invading army, or a tyrannical government, against impossible odds and emerging victorious. Well, strictly speaking, the kids in the movie weren’t very triumphant, and realistically speaking, neither would the gun nuts in a similar situation.

Tell Me Again Why It's "Too Soon" To Talk About Gun Control

When I first saw the story of Friday's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, my first reaction was almost boredom.  That would turn out to be the most positive emotion that I would have that day.  The fact that this being the second public shooting this week isn't the most astonishing thing about this story should at least give us some pause.  What really hurts my heart, and I'm sure the hearts of most people, are the victims.  Of the 27 people killed in this shooting, 20 of them were children, some as young as 5 years old.