You’re kidding, right?

Oh, %$#@!

That was my response as the talk shows filled like the theater was filled with people in Colorado. Only the airwaves were filled with callers calling about the shooting, instead of bodies. But, like the shooting, someone had to toss in an incendiary: in this case one hell of a stink bomb.

I don’t usually listen to Ed Schultz, mostly because he reminds me style-wise of a left Limbaugh for some reason. I’ve never quite nailed down why. But someone was filling in for him, so I listened. As the callers multiplied suddenly some jackass said it was all the Liberals fault and if everyone had had a gun this wouldn’t have happened.

No, idiot, it would have been worse. Can you imagine a theater full of folks shooting at where they think the sound is coming from? Yes, the shooter might have gotten shot too, but so would many innocent folks: maybe more than whatever the death toll will end up being.

Guns are tools. Tools used for killing and target shooting. They are deadly tools by design. The idea that just the mere presence of a gun will solve any problem is purely idiotic. The person has to know how to use it, when to use it or just show it, how to do so safely so unintended targets aren’t hurt and absolutely how to shoot well. There are a hell of a lot of bad shots out there.

When you claim “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” you really need to also understand that guns also don’t solve problems, people do: and if they must use a gun to solve a problem they need to know how and when. If a man is standing over your bed and looks like he’s planning on killing you and your wife, or husband, that may be an appropriate time. However: you must remember this usually happens in the dark and what you think you see may be something else. If what you think you’re seeing is something else and the bullet goes through a wall and kills the guy in the apartment next door you are responsible, or should be.

Theater goers were not only in the dark, but faced with many other confusing things: like people in panic mode.

Banning guns will never happen in this culture. I think it a topic mostly not worth talking about because it never will happen. Registering something a prisoner can make, and sometimes they do, won’t work: especially in a culture with years and years of unregistered weapons out there and so many firm pro-gun folks.

But insisting those who purchase guns take a safety course, like the NRA one I took as a kid? Not a bad idea. Having residue in gunpowder that can be traced back to whomever purchased it? Well, as long as guilt is not auto-assumed for any shooting that may have happened, yes: let’s do it. That may be a tougher caveat than we think.

I am a gun owner. But the idea that guns will solve our problems is a damn bad one. Honestly? It didn’t work all that well in the West. While the good guys win in movies the truth is more than a bit mixed, historically. The Earps were not the pure as new snow heroes some movies claim they were. When Bonnie and Clyde were around guns caused as much of a problem as they solved.

Here is the problem with this caller: for some damn reason some of us break problems we’re having down into it’s all the damn Liberals, or Conservatives, fault… two terms that if we examine them closely are vast over generalizations.

But even if we give these terms more credence than they’re due, all our problems are no more “all the Liberal’s fault,” than they are all the fault of Conservatives, Libertarians, Jews, Blacks, Whites or groundhogs.

OK, that’s all true, except maybe the groundhogs. Damn groundhogs. Ask Bill Murray about that one.

When a tragedy happens like what happened in Colorado blaming it on Obama, or Romney, or any one group, is usually just a sign your view of life is so much up your own posterior you might as well look for anything a doc might find when he does a colonoscopy while you’re up there.

Oops, sorry pal! That’s not where your cancer is. Sorry to tell you, this but you have terminal cancer of the thought process.

And don’t bother coming back out either.

The human race is better without you.

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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