ON: Guns

If assault rifles were banned, if firearms were illegal, more children would be alive today.  Easy enough math.  But then that goes for the world really, not just Connecticut.  Where else would a deranged twenty year old go for his blaze of glory than the gun shop, it is true firearms are better glory blazers than arsenic and old lace.  Were I an op-ed hack I could propagandize you with stories of 85 year old WWII vets fending off varmints and robbers with their trusty service issue Colts, or would-be rapists learning a lesson at the end of some woman's .38.  These are the stories that tingle the spine, (and elsewhere), of gun nuts -- it is right wing porn akin to how dreamy left wing friends of mine get when they imagine the day when churches can no longer attempt to shame girls out of abortions: blinding romanticism,  much of it fictive.
I don't want to propagandize the second amendment.  I must question myself: Does owning guns make one immoral?  Does the appreciation and participation in American gun culture  sister one to psychosis like this new tragedy?  Does the USA's short brutal pistol whip of a history prove itself most backwards in our stubborn attachment to private ordinance?  What am I if there is a soft spot in my heart for murder tools?
My parents both had guns, and still do.  My father was a collector of late 19th century repeater rifles when I was a kid -- an 1886 Winchester is a beautiful artifact.  I have uncles who were/are avid hunters, who have shared that enthusiasm with their children.  I live in a state that proved itself righteously for gay marriage, but this same state would revolt if you were to take the guns.  Maine's gun culture is unremarkable for a rural state, for a poor state, other than Maine's laws regarding protecting your home are considered draconian by other states-- one needs not first look to escape an intruder, as is law in other states, were one protecting your home.  As is now so common to such poor states, there is a persistent and depressing drug culture out here in the boonies, and yet, even scaling for population, this state is ridiculously low crime, low violent crime, low robbery.  Knowing the citizenry is armed is a deterrent, I'm not making an argument, there is no argument.   And I do mean armed: a higher percentage of Mainers own guns than do Texans.
+I have never hunted; when it comes to killing an animal, I'm a peaceable hippy; the first dog I loved, when I was five or six, was shot by a hunter, and ever since, well, it's not for me.  However I am one of those men you might catch in front of the television, transfixed by History Channel documentaries about weapons; there's some boyish gun love here - romantic infatuation with weaponry.  But to be clear, every time I handle a gun there is a twinge of dread; I don't feel more powerful handling a weapon, I feel less powerful; it is in controlling this dread, this too powerful thing, there is satisfaction.
-- I'm not reaching into the depths of what this kid did in Connecticut; there is no bottom.    I'd rather not think too closely on it, frankly -- I'd rather walk my dogs this morning, and forget the dead.  I will say that when one considers the unfathomable, and plays out encountering the darkness that was in this person, one finds their own level .  I find it reasonable in other people to desire guns regulated because the weight of this tragedy, and others, is greater than what good comes out of a private militia, (as that tricky amendment states).  I also know there is a kind of gun nut who might in the secretive heart of themselves fantasize of encountering the horror, and by chance make a hero of themselves with armed force, those loudmouths who are always telling you just what they would have done had they "been there".  But there are other people, who don't want to be powerful, who want to be meek, who keep their guns so as to be meek, so as to not live a militant life.