Gun Nuts

    When we Americans crank up our gun control fights, we display a marked capacity for cockeyed behavior.  Hear U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in an email to constituents (we will return later to the salutation's veiled insinuation):
    "Dear Patriot,
    "You and I are literally surrounded.  The gun grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out assault on the Second Amendment.  On your rights.
    "On Your freedom.
    "Just the other night President Obama urged them to act.  And then he went one step further, spelling out 23 executive orders he will take to get your guns."
    The message continues in this vein.  Even by the standards of fear-mongering, this is gamy stuff.  President Obama and his legislative allies have not offered to "grab" anything.  If fair-minded people may consider some particulars debatable -- and some do -- the president's agenda is not extreme. It displays not a whit of contempt for the Constitution. It is a measured attempt to address problems of gun violence.
    Sen.  McConnell, who may face a re-election challenge from the right, has extra reasons for choosing to incite his constituents rather than lead them.  But he is far from being alone in going for red-meat rhetoric on this issue. Images of jack-booted government are common coin among opponents of gun control.
    What prompts these extremes of language and attitude?
     Greed, in some instances.
    Assuming for the sake of argument that the average family has no pressing need of an imitation combat rifle, it is reasonable to ask: Who has a vested interest in protecting the manufacture and sale of imitation combat rifles -- and Saturday night specials, and other dubious weaponry?
    It is reasonable to answer:  People who manufacture and sell dubious weaponry.
    Enter the National Rifle Association, a gun industry lobby posing as a guardian of citizen's rights. Lobbyists who want to keep their jobs must demonstrate clout. The NRA shrinks from no opportunity, however bizarre. Not long ago it buffaloed the Wisconsin legislature away from a proposal to ban loaded firearms from the public galleries of the legislative chambers.
    The NRA is loud and clever on behalf of gun manufacturers. But it also is openly ruthless and, from time to time, downright absurd. (Its website contains an enemies list that includes the YWCA and Pam Dawber, an aging alumna of the '70s TV sitcom Mork and Mindy).  All this for a business that is -- in its sales to civilian markets -- a very small player in the American economy.
    How can one rogue organization command the attention of the whole  country on behalf of a fringe industry?
    It doesn't.  Quite apart from the ranting of the NRA, gun control propsals strike their own chords among Americans.  They raise questions of privacy and property rights in parts of the country where gun ownership is an ordinary and harmless feature of the common culture.
    And they call to mind of one of government's lower habits. Unable -- or unwilling -- to do what they should, officials may simply do whatever they can and pronounce the result sufficient.  Sensible people may conclude that some gun control proposals fit this pattern all too neatly: Unabe to control or deter the violent few, the government settles for the expedient of encumbering the innocent many.  Few of us require an explanation of the old gibe, "Close enough for government work."
     Even so, reasonable and promising gun control measures are available for the taking.  They may suffer in public debate precisely to the degree that they are not extreme. Measured voices are difficult to hear in a storm of shouting.
    Nowadays, wild-eyed gun advocates are gladly sheltering in the larger right-wing assault on Obama administration policies and on President Obama personally.  (The NRA sponsored an ad calling the president "elitist" and caricaturing the protective measures required by law for his young daughters.)
    In this lamentable context, Sen. McConnell sets out to lather up the home folks.  He and those who agree with him are "patriots."  People who disagree with him are -- well, something else.
    We may be reminded of the 18th Century sage Samuel Johnson.  He said:
    "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."