The Nature of Things

Yesterday marked one month since the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since that day, 917 more people in America have been killed by gun violence. And since that time, debate has raged - rage being the operative word - across the television screens of the country, adding more heat than light to the issue of gun violence. There has been a spate of crazy people posting videos threatening to start killing people if anyone tries to take their guns . And then we have the truly delusional. Have you heard about the latest conspiracy theory by the gun nuts that the entire Sandy Hook incident was "performance art" , something dreamed up by the Obama Administration in order to soften the country up for the confiscation of guns? All those parental tears are just pretend. Those children are not dead! All those little coffins were empty. The Sandy Hook "truthers" are even going so far as to harass a man who helped some of the ...

Seriously, Wayne LaPierre? That's your contribution to the national discussion? The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? How about just disarming them both? But, of course, that would make too much sense. The vice-president of the National Rifle Association had his week-long-awaited "news conference" yesterday at which he took no questions. He simply read a rambling, thoroughly unhinged statement in a quavery voice. It was a statement that blamed gun violence in America on everything except guns. Video games, violence in movies, song lyrics, people who want to control the easy accessibility of guns, the general culture and on and on. What he didn't say was that all those things he alluded to could apply to any other industrialized nation in the world and yet no other nation in the world has the problem with gun violence that we do. No other nation in the world has a Wayne LaPierre and an NRA. I think there may be a connection. Charles Blow ...