Gun Control? Dream On.

Why am I even bothering to write about gun control? That was going to be my opening sentence when this column was to be focused on the Aurora, Colorado, movie-theater massacre: twelve people murdered and fifty-eight wounded, some very severely, by James Holmes, demented neuroscience graduate student. Then came the massacre at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin: six killed and three wounded by Wade Michael Page, 40-year-old white supremacist and leader of a racist hardcore band called End Apathy. And even after this horrific crime, which the FBI is calling “domestic terrorism,” my opening is the same: Why am I even bothering to write about gun control? End apathy? Fat chance. If even the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, one of Congress’s own, by Jared Loughner, another hyperarmed madman, didn’t move her pro-gun colleagues or their constituents, nothing will.
 
Remember the Million Mom March? In May 2000, 750,000 women gathered on the National Mall to call for what are often referred to as “reasonable” controls on guns, like background checks at gun shows and handgun registration (as opposed to “unreasonable” curbs like making it illegal to buy weapons intended to kill people—for example, handguns or AK-47s, let alone 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the Internet). Today you might as well stand on the Mall and sing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

Read on...