To gun nut zealots, every mass shooting provides another undeniable and
convincing argument that what America needs most is more guns, not less…
No matter how bad of a pretender Ronald Reagan was for myriad reasons,
he did have enough sense to advocate for measures to protect the people
from themselves without deleting the 2nd Amendment. In fact, President
Obama and sane Democrats’ gun safety proposals are not as robust as
those that Reagan promoted, but of course Reagan was a white guy.
Reagan
said “
I
do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting,
for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an
assault rifle is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.” He also signed legislation as California governor “
prohibiting the carrying of firearms on your person, in your vehicle, and in any public place or on the street,” as well as a 15-day waiting period for firearm purchases.
On signing gun safety laws, the wingnut demigod said, “
There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
As pretender, Reagan signed a ban on fully automatic rifles,
supported legislation for background checks, a waiting period for
potential gun owners, and was an ardent supporter of a ban on
assault-weapons and the Brady Bill.
Of course, those days are history and Republicans are unwilling to “
take their country back”
to an era of gun safety sense; they are just too afraid of everything.
It is why there is not a chance in Hell there will be any legislation to
help protect Americans from gun violence, and if there were it would be
fundamentally useless with the past six years of NRA fear-mongering and
gun proliferation that created an already well-armed population.
One commentator said the status quo on guns in the US will never change without “
overwhelming political force”
because evidence, death tolls, or rational debate will never have any
effect on gun zealots. That assessment is only half right.
To garner “
overwhelming political force” for minimal gun
safety laws, a significant number of Americans will have to be convinced
using evidence and debate. With a terrified population, and guns and
gun violence now informing America’s “
worldview and identity” as a “
structurally violent society,” evidence and persuasion, even emotional persuasion, to change is futile no matter how many mass shootings or gun casualties.
It is noteworthy that with well-over 300 million and counting guns in
a population of roughly 320 million, any attempt at using “
overwhelming political force” to pass a gun safety law will be met with “
overwhelming firepower;” it is the result of Republican, the NRA, “
false patriots,”
and wingnut conditioning of the population with pathological brain
deformities and psychological dysfunction. For America, the die is cast
and mass shootings and out-of-control gun deaths are here to stay; the
idea of America being any different than violent nations like Iraq and
Afghanistan is hardly arguable.
Every single time there is a mass shooting, a couple-hundred
Americans seriously believe the deaths and carnage will provide the
emotional and convincing argument to halt the proliferation of guns. But
to terrified gun nut zealots, every mass shooting provides another
undeniable and convincing argument that what America needs most is more
guns, not less.
As surrogate for the National Rifle Association, frightened evangelical Cuban-Canadian immigrant Cruz said the increase in mass shootings means that now more than ever, “
the American people must be armed to get rid of bad guys by using our guns.”
Cruz took advantage of the wingnut brain’s abnormalities and
psychological dysfunction and said gun safety measures are President
Obama and Hillary Clinton’s plan to “
strip us of our fundamental
right to protect our homes, our lives, and our families while they
refuse to protect America and stand up to Islam.” It was typical
fear mongering that Cruz knows easily manipulates his terrified,
psychologically bent, and abnormal-brained base.
According to an ever-growing body of psychological and social scientific
research, the reason “
liberals
and wingnuts disagree about politics is because they are different
people at the level of personality, psychology, and physiological and
genetic traits.” Translation: wingnuts are physically abnormal
and psychologically incapable of not being frightened and cannot exist
without a loaded firearm at their side.
In a
paper by John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, research shows that “
political wingnuts have a negativity bias meaning they are physiologically
more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their
environments;” it is why Republicans have such an easy task keeping their base frightened of everything that is “
not white and evangelically wingnut.”
Other research this column has
referenced
in the past to demonstrate why Republican voters, although dirt stupid,
are driven by abject fear is due to an abnormality in the brain
preventing them from normal human cognitive and emotional dynamics. The
Hibbing research teams found, and
reported, that wingnuts have larger right amygdalae than liberals or normal human beings.
A normal amygdalae regulates basic pleasure and fear responses that wingnuts are incapable of performing. Besides being terrified of
anything Republicans tell them to, an abnormally functioning amygdala is
responsible for a world of psychological disorders and conditions
including wild irrational fear, high anxiety and PTSD.
As the President has reiterated often, if Republicans and their
frightened base could not be moved to support the most basic gun safety
law, background checks, after 20 children and six adults were
slaughtered like animals, by a white 'christian', nothing will move them
to act. It does not matter if it is a mass shooting in a theater,
cult, women’s health clinic, or a school campus, Republicans will not
act because they are as frightened of the NRA as their base is
everything non-christian, non-white, and non-male. Although prayers are
not going to stop gun violence or mass shootings, if it makes decent
people feel better, then by all means pray away because it is about
effective as what this country is doing now.
