American Psycho, Redux

I just saw the breaking news about the crazed lone gunman in Binghamton, New York. What is it about the American psyche that leads a laid-off IBM employee to grab his personal arsenal and slay 15 innocent bystanders? Remember last week's lone maniac at the nursing home in Alabama?

Certainly guns don't "cause" the problem of these mass slaughters. But, they contribute by making the killing easier and faster. Was this what the Founding Fathers meant by a "Well-regulated militia"? Our gun mania, combined with an insatiable appetite for self-gratification via illicit drugs, has led to the near-disintegration of Mexican society. The drug cartels buy their weapons in the US, then transport them across the border to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, our own government is so cowered by the gun lobby that they are afraid to take on the NRA and institute real gun regulation, even for semi-automatic weapons.

Violence begets violence. Jesus said it, but this so-called Judeo-Christian nation has run the trolley off the tracks. What really scares the bejeebus out of me is that some paranoid whackjob in an Idaho trailer or a lonely corner of his mom's basement will take seriously the blubbering mania of Glen Beck and take a shot at one of our leaders. I worry about it every day, as the Republicans become increasingly marginalized and the President grows ever more popular.