The massacre at Fort Hood has me wondering what kind of nation we really are. My inescapable conclusion is that as a nation, we're a fighter, not a lover.
Our lack of amorous disposition is evident throughout the culture wars. Abstinence education staggers on despite ample proof that it puts the teen population at risk of disease and unwanted pregnancy. Just this weekend, an already insanely vitriolic attempt to overhaul health care degenerated into another abortion debate, further reducing the control that individual women have over their own bodies. And for most of the past year, we've all stood by while state after state has insisted that sexual orientation is a fine reason for depriving some law abiding citizens of the right to marry other law abiding citizens. Seen through this lens, we seem less like libertarians and more like prudes who insist on having a government chaperon in our bedrooms.
Of course, we draw the line at the gun shop: there, the government is not welcome. And this explains why tragedies of the sort that occurred at Fort Hood happen in the US more than any other developed nation on earth. That's not opinion by the way: it's empirically validated fact. Our 'love affair' with the Second Amendment has ridiculously awful and clearly unintended consequences of depriving too many people of their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
And here's the kicker: we can't talk about it. There's a sort of NRA mandated form of political correctness that insists that we must hate the shooter not the weapon. Perhaps thats why no one is focused on how easy it was for one lunatic criminal to legally, easily and privately arm himself from a convenient local arsenal (gun shop). Instead, we have inane political theater of the sort staged by Senator Joe Lieberman, who wants to put the Army under investigation for harboring a killer in its midst -- irony intended.
I'm not now suggesting, and never have, that we take away all of everyone's guns. I am, however, asking that we consider taking a lot of them away. That doesn't mean that I despise freedom, but it does mean that the right to bear arms should not be allowed to obliterate all the others.