It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.
This week’s fail was brought to you by a legal system that allows an obviously disturbed individual to carry an AR-15, along with several other firearms and a couple of smoke bombs, into a movie theater in suburban Colorado. That was the reaction to yesterday’s terrible shooting in Aurora that has made the most sense to me. My instinct after a tragedy is to look for some public policy issue to connect with it. Lest any of you accuse me and other pundits of trying to politicize people’s deaths, let me ask you to consider this as a coping mechanism. This is what we do for a living; it’s how we operate.
After a high-profile mass shooting, the political discourse moves as follows: Do your damnedest to demonstrate how your thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families → find an excuse to blame a person or group you generally blame for everything else → decline to recommend any actual changes → sit back and bask as absolutely nothing changes → rinse and repeat. I fully expect the same to transpire over this weekend and into next week. Former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) state assault weapons ban will be of particular interest.
I would like someone to explain why any state hasn’t implemented a ban on assault weapons. Protection? Not unless you’re protecting yourself from Syrian militants. Possible need to overthrow the government? Sorry, I need a non-apocryphal reason. Unless they are intended for the purposes of hunting, sport shooting or personal defense, firearms have no purpose in the hands of civilians. And any civilian who wants one designed for assault, cannot be trusted with it. That’s where I draw the line on guns.
That’s about all I can say from a pundit’s perspective, at least for now. I’m writing this on Friday afternoon; I’m going to synagogue in a couple of hours, and maybe adding the Aurora victims to the list of people for whom we recite the Mourner’s Kaddish will calm me down. In the meantime, here’s a West Wing quote for inspiration:
The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory . . . and God bless the United States of America.
