A Catholic priest who spent a lot of his time consoling survivors of death and destruction because of his religious role has said that a civilized people shows empathy and mercy by “entering into the chaos of another.” In the Sandy Hook mass murder, people around the world immediately entered the chaos of Newton to show that the world cared. They shed and shared tears with the families of victims.
    But Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association, and the rest of the gun lobby remained silent “until all the facts were in.” Not even an incoherent sympathetic peep until the NRA executive secretary turned himself into an evil monster at his national monologue. The gun lobby never even bothered to “enter into the chaos of another.” They have put their faith in Glock and Bushmaster. The more semi-automatic rifles and guns we have in society, the safer we will be. The evidence laughs at such an obscenity. We murder about 65 children under 12 a year in Chicago with firearms, a metro area of under ten million. Great Britain, a country of 63 million, registers 58 dead from firearms for all ages—in a year.
   As I was listening to the evil, monstrous LaPierre describe during his “press conference” how only good guys with guns could take care of evil, monstrous bad guys with guns, I was reading a review in Harper’s Magazine about a serious book written by Aaron Jones, a philosophy professor at the University of California, titled “Assholes: A Theory,” published by Doubleday. He lists the main characteristics of assholes: (1) They aggressively horn in where not wanted, (2) They constantly endanger others, (3) They lack remorse, empathy, and show no mercy, and (4) They resist any sort of correction.
   What did LaPierre blame our torrents of mass murders on? We don’t have enough people armed with semi-automatic weapons to protect the public and our mental health programs are inadequate. No mention of 100-round drums of ammo or 30-round magazines for rifles and handguns. No mention of the connection between gun shows, criminals, and the lack of background checks. No mention of 33,000 U.S. firearm deaths a year and the fact that Japan kills eight and Great Britain 58. In short, LaPierre fits all of Jones’s definition of an asshole.  
   Jones makes a fascinating observation: “Assholes are made, not born. They are made by a society’s gender culture. A newborn boy in the U.S., Italy, or Israel is much more likely to live the life of an asshole than a newborn boy in Japan, Norway, or Canada.” He went on to identify some recent political assholes, naming George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, the philanderer Silvio Berlusconi (the former president of Italy), Dick Cheney, Ralph Nader, and John Edwards, who tootled a TV camera gal while his wife was dying of cancer. When asked why he named no women, he responded that most women don’t fit the definition, and that Ann Coulter would be classified as a bitch, but never an asshole. I agree with that analysis.

Now We Have A Gun
For Every Man,
Woman, And Child
In The U.S.

   The Congressional Research Service estimated in 2007 that we had 106 million handguns, 105 million rifles, and 83 million shotguns in the U.S. A U.S. Census estimate in 2012 puts our population at about 315 million. Our gun total has kept pace. Although records are very hard to come by, firearm experts estimate that we have averaged about 4.5 million firearm sales per year since 2007. Add 22.5 million more firearms to the total of 294 million in 2007, and we get 316.5 million. Hooray! We now have enough guns to give the first new 1.5 million citizens a firearm when they are sworn in!
   Why do we have only five percent of the world’s population and 50 percent of the world’s firearms? Over two hundred years we have created a John Wayne/Charlie Starkweather/OK Corral gun culture. The first mandate in the country was not legislated in 2008 through Obamacare, contrary to what the Republicans and some members of the Supreme Court yell about. The first mandate was passed in 1676 by colonial politicians requiring all settlers to maintain firearms in their homes. Then the 18th century birthed the Kentucky rifle, the 19th century became the age of Colt and Wyatt Earp, and the 20th century the Thompson submachine gun of “Machine Gun” Kelly and U.S. Marines—and Russia’s AK-47. The six-shooter Colt created the slogan that “God Created Man And The Colt Made Them Equal.”
   We average 32 firearm murders a day, 55 kills by accident and suicide, and 195 wounded. We have homicide rates almost 20 times the rate of other high-income countries. The murder rate for 15– to 24-year-olds is almost 43 times higher. Our homicide rate is 30 times that of France. The U.S. has 87 percent of child-related gun deaths in the world.

Will The Gun Culture
Go The Same Way As
The Tobacco And
Car Cultures?

  Remember when Cadillac fins, 450 hp. Belchfire V-8s, Mustangs, Dodge Chargers of the Dukes, and Pontiac Firebirds captured the imagination of our young Richard Pettys? Those days have really shrunk because now all the cars look the same. The car culture has been muted.
  Getting rid of the gun culture is going to be more difficult because as Henry Allen of the Washington Post says, “Guns are an emotional symbol... of self-reliance and protection and patriarchy, and trying to separate the dangerous gun fetish from the benign gun patriotism is a cultural, not a legislative job. Guns in America are romantic and symbolic.” I agree with him about the culture. But I disagree with him when he says it can’t be done legislatively. Mr. Allen, how many Americans in the last half century have been killed by automatic machine guns? None. Why? Because of a 1934 law. Allen is right when he says our culture is dominated by a worship of guns and gun violence. The worship of guns isn’t limited to rednecks, crackers, and trailer trash. Legion magazine advertises a commemorative gold-and-nickel-embossed Colt .45 pistol for $1,995. As a Marine officer I carried a M1911 Colt. I would be embarrassed just to have this one around the house.
   Check our video games, movies, and the sale of “gun” stories of Zane Grey and our own Louis L’Amour. We legislated automatic weapons back into military armories. We can break the stranglehold of paranoid psychopaths like LaPierre by hitting them with legislation in many areas. We need to drown the gun culture in a bathtub.
    **Mental Health: Carole MacInnes, who taught the shooter Adam Lanza in second grade, said he was a “smart, sweet” boy at Sandy Hook. What turned him into a super nutcase 13 years later? Over the years we have slowly changed the culture about race, gender, gays, drunk driving, and smoking. Drunks aren’t funny anymore. Dr. Kurt Newman, president and executive officer of the Children’s National Medical Center, says one in five U.S. children suffers from a medical condition that affects his or her mental health. That’s 15 million children. Only three million ever receive any kind of treatment. He adds that by the age of 14, half of all lifetime diagnoses of mental illness appear, and that by age 24 three-fourths of all mental illnesses can be diagnosed. Schizophrenia usually develops between 15 and 24. We also must open the mental institutions we closed 40 years ago because of costs and anti-discrimination laws. It’s imperative we keep people like Adam Lanza away from society—particularly after we were too late with John Hinckley, Ronald Reagan’s shooter-nutcase. An example after the Virginia Tech massacre: a father took his schizophrenic son to a Tech emergency room for treatment. After refusing treatment, the doctor told the father, “Bring him back when he tries to kill someone or tries to kill you.”
    **Semi-automatic Weapons: There may be as many as five million assault-type semi-automatics loose in society. Forget about confiscation or payback programs. You can’t confiscate that many anyway, just like we can’t put 12 million illegals on buses and send them home. Limit all magazines to six rounds and replace magazines with greater “capability” with free six-round magazines. If a shooter survives a shootout using larger magazines (most are committing suicide anyway), add another prison year to his sentence for every round over six. Gradually make them illegal over a period of time. Magazines over six rounds should be later confiscated and the owner heavily fined. In 1994 civilians had 25 million large-capacity magazines in their possession, a 100-year supply. If you need more than six rounds to kill a deer or elk, you need to take hunting lessons.
    **Internet Sales of Ammo, Guns, and Other Equipment: All Internet sales of anything to do with guns have to be banned. Today buying 10,000 rounds over the Internet makes no one even blink. The Norwegian shooter killed 77 teenagers with ammo bought from U.S. companies on the Internet. The Aurora and Sandy Hook shooters bought body armor on the Internet. Law enforcement can buy equipment direct from sources. Why does a civilian need body armor? I spent two minutes on the Internet and I found I could buy a Colt M203 40mm grenade launcher that is “very hard to find” complete with Colt factory manual for $5,399. You can buy a 12-gauge DD1-210 semi-automatic street sweeper with 12-round drum for $2,295. Special ammo is extra. This is really insane.
    **Muzzle Velocity: Modern rifles have muzzle velocities of more than 4,000 feet per second. The higher the muzzle velocity, the more damage to flesh and bone. Muzzle velocities for all civilian weapons should be controlled by law. There must be a middle ground where firearms will still be good for hunting animals, not killing people. Bring in the experts on this one.
    **Gun Shows: All gun sales should be run through an electronic database that states keep up to date using accurate information on felons and mental health patients. Shows should be checked for illegal equipment such as large magazines and drums. This one is so easy even The Best Congress Money Can Buy should be embarrassed—but I guess they are beyond that human trait. A recent Fort Worth gun show covered 25 acres and charged an $8 entrance fee. How many guns does it take to cover 25 acres?
    **Ammunition: Ammunition for all firearms for civilian use must be restricted by metal types and specific characteristics. Bullets designed to be armor-piercing, whether for “bulletproof” vests or blasting through metal, should be banned. Determine whether all coated ammo—Teflon, Black Talon, or other—should be banned.
    **Waiting Period: What’s the matter with a 15-day “cooling off” waiting period? How long can a nutcase hold a “hate”?
    **Increase Taxes On All Shooting Equipment: We wound 195 people a day with firearms. That number could run about $100,000 per person for health care, perhaps totaling about $20 million. Some are lifetime wounds. Taxes for all shooting gear should amount to about $7 billion a year to cover these costs.
    **Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: A director should be appointed immediately and the central database of all firearm transactions should be updated with the latest electronic and computer equipment. The ATF now does everything by hand. All restrictions about federal inspections of dealers must be lifted. Surprise inspections should be the call for the day instead of prohibited. Scientific research on guns and the collection of data needs to be a constant effort.
    **Gun Permits: We should follow the Japanese system for granting gun permits. The applicant must attend an all-day class and pass a written test. Then you must pass a shooting-range test. If successful, then you go to a psychiatric hospital for mental and drug tests. If you pass those, you go through criminal background checks, which include any relationships with criminals or extremist groups. This is why only eight Japanese a year on average die from firearms instead of thousands.

Why the NRA
And The Gun
Manufacturers Want
Armed School Guards

   These psychopaths simply want to sell more guns to school guards. The deaths of children have nothing to do with it. There are 98,817 K-12 schools in the U.S. I was principal for a  number of years of Fargo South, which had 1,800 students and 200 teachers and classified employees. A high school of this size has up to 30 outside doors and numerous buildings, and operates 16 hours a day for six days of the week. At night we could have 2,000 watching a basketball game in one gym, 500 in the theater enjoying a play, and 200 in the swimming pool watching a meet—just for starters. Clubs and other activities would bring hundreds more into the school until 11 p.m. How many policemen does a community of 2,000 have?
   It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the psychopath LaPierre will soon recommend that all fire trucks have a machine gun cage above the cab to escort fireman on emergency runs because of the ambush and deaths of firemen near Rochester, New York.
   Subduing the gun culture is going to be very difficult. It will take gun owners themselves to smack down the psychopaths of the NRA and the gun lobby. In the end, we will need a complete registry of all civilian weapons in the U.S. to contain the greed. Joshua Foer of The New Yorker writes that there are many ways for speakers to see the world: “We can glimpse, glance, visualize, view, look, spy, ogle, stare, gawk, gape, peek, watch, and scrutinize.” We have people who hate guns and people who love guns with many different “views” of the gun culture.
   But we have to eliminate the gun culture to rid us of the most violent society in the world. Instead of putting armed security guards in school or arming the teachers, administrators, secretaries, and custodians to counter a gun-crazed society, we must slowly strangle the NRA and the gun lobby. Politicians will have to change their profiles in cowardice to profiles in courage. The solution to gun violence is not more guns. Should teachers be paid extra for teaching in combat zones?