Guns Flying Off the Shelves

I always read the web version of my hometown newspaper, to see what's going on in the county where I spent my teenage years and graduated high school, and this morning I found an interesting story.

Guns of all stripe are flying off the shelves of gun dealers, pawn shops and sporting goods stores, in the erroneous -- the insane -- belief that President Obama will somehow try to confiscate them from the hands of Americans and prevent them from buying more.

This is as stupid as it sounds, but that won't stop the knuckledragging redneck morons, there and across the country, from believing everything they've been told by the kool-aid-dispensing NRA, who trots out this shit every election, as regular as clockwork.

Obama is on record as saying "As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms", but he also realizes that there are reasonable restrictions that government can place on that right.

The NRA holds the extreme position that any restriction on gun ownership is unconstitutional. Carried to its logical end, I guess that Wayne LaPierre and those of his ilk would have no problem with me and you owning suitcase nukes and rocket launchers. I don't think that even the NRA is advocating that we all have a right to possess those, so apparently they are in agreement after all that some kind of restrictions are necessary.

(And speaking of the NRA, don't let's forget that they were pretty slow on the uptake when, after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the government was confiscating legally-owned and legally-possessed guns from the hands of black people. It wasn't until they were shamed into action that they made a late and pretty unconvincing argument against it.)

Reasonable and responsible gun ownership is a right guaranteed by the US Constitution, but over the years the NRA has been very successful at displaying their version of the boogieman, a "fascist" Democratic president slavering over the possibility that he can confiscate every single gun in this country.

Speaking as a meat-eating gun-toting ultra-liberal redneck myself, this is of course a total bunch of crap. I was at a recreational barbecue a few summers back, wearing my Veterans for Kerry hat, and one of my fellow guests started mouthing off on Kerry and the Democrats wanting to take all of our guns away (you know, the same old story, the same old song and dance).

I said, "Hold it, Luther. Can you imagine any possible scenario in which the Democrats could successfully confiscate every handgun in this country? Your handgun? Any way at all?"

"Well," he conceded, "no, I can't."

"Neither can I," I said. "So let's have some more of those ribs."

I don't think I made a Kerry voter out of the guy, but I do think I pulled some of that NRA wool off his eyes.