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Friday, July 20, 2012

Gun Dumb Numb

Every elected Democrat and progressive policymaker who believes in common sense gun regulation -- including bans on assault rifles like the one used by a gunman hours ago in a Colorado cinema to kill at least a dozen people and wound dozens more -- but has given up work on or even discussion of the issue for fear of the Republicans and the NRA is exactly as much a part of the problem as the Republicans and the NRA themselves are. Of all the many paranoid conspiracy theories about President Obama, I fear the one in which they declare the President will make it harder for people to buy and keep surreal private arsenals in a second term is quite as far-fetched as all the others. Those who think American climate change denialists might stop their relentless obstruction of environmental regulation and renewable infrastructure as greenhouse storms begin literally to destroy the world before their eyes, should contemplate with extreme care the way gun nuts grow more strident in their insistence on the elimination of ever more barriers to the purchase of ever more destructive arms in response to massacre after massacre after massacre after massacre.

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