Bullies

The percentage of homes with guns in this country is at a record low and sales have been brisk, particularly after recent mass shootings so it follows that more guns are now being owned by fewer people. Gun owners, even some of the more gung ho advocates, can’t be painted with one brush. But many of the extreme spokesmen who manage to get the press claim to be arming themselves to resist a federal government, which for openers intends to take away their guns.

Surely some of these people must know better and are saying it for the team. Even after Newtown, gun control Congressmen have been unable to reinstate the assault weapons ban that had been law for ten years before it expired in 2004. And yet some day they may be able to seize guns from citizens??

In my opinion what binds stereotypical gun worshipers is that they are at heart bullies. Many gun fanatics know that they’ll never need a gun that fires one hundred clips without reloading. It’s just nice to be able to show the folks who say you shouldn’t be able do something that you could if you wanted.  

I’ll go a step further with this bully business and say that based on recent performance the same can be said of Republicans. I cite the intentional overt snubbing of the President by prominent party Congressman. This may be the only thing that the Tea Party people and the establishment have in common because apart from that they live in different financial worlds. The party’s resistance to gun control has less to do with conviction than votes. I believe that this has until now been a successful way of their showing who really calls the shots, despite being a minority of both the electorate and the elected. 

 

As one who was sent to military school in March of seventh grade, I was prime material for bullies. As a prep school senior I was one in my own right, although of a lesser sort. Bullying is natural to much of our juvenile nature. What youngsters do is one thing. But what they do as supposedly mature arbiters of what determines a nation’s laws and its direction as a world power is another matter entirely.