Gun crazy

With three school shootings in a week, It's becoming increasingly bizarre to me how nobody is talking about guns. The media storm swirls around these unhappy communities, showing endless footage of memorial services and prayer meetings. But the bigger "repurcussion" story to emerge is parents demanding to know how safe their own kids' schools are, whether the doors are locked or not and how easy it is for people to gain access.

I don't understand why the easy availability of guns has not been seized upon as a key theme in these crimes. Maybe this seems more striking to me because I have been living in England for a few years now, where guns are strictly regulated and where gun crime remains rare. Why is it still so easy to get a gun here?

This piece in the Progressive raises just this issue, also linking the shootings with the other big story of the week, the disclosure of Congressman Foley's inappropriate emails to young boys. Violence begets violence. This editorial in the St. Pete Times (which, by the way, had the initial set of Foley emails before ABC did but thought they were too ambiguous to run with) calls for stricter gun control, but notes that the Republican controlled Congress seems intent on weakening existing gun control legislation as it is. This week alone we've seen evidence of corruption, deceit, moral rot, selfishness and cowardice from the Republican party. When is this nightmare going to end?

Yesterday I was in a store in town and noticed they were selling a little digital counter on a keychain, a perpetual countdown to the President's last moment in office. All of us waiting in line to pay shared a rueful laugh about it. I thought about buying one, but it was twelve bucks, which seemed a little steep. Still, the owner told me they had already sold four that day.

At least Hastert's probably on the way out. Back to the Boar's Nest for him!