Not-so-fast-but-but-furious

As soon as I saw the movie theatre shooting on the news, I told my friend, watch, tomorrow we'll hear this was done by Obama as part of his evil socialist plot to take our guns.

Sure enough:

Is Batman massacre staged terror?

I'm reassured as this is all meticulously explained by Alex Jones's "overwhelming evidence" in his "gut".

It "magically happened". What more do we need to know?

Not-so-fast-but-but-furious Right Wingers probably won’t read the Fortune article that best explains the ATF Fast and Furious episode, because they already know all they need to know from FOX(R) and talk radio. I’d like to share my favorite short paragraphs just in case one might read what I write before their lunacy kicks into overdrive.

They (ATF) insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

...Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal.

This won’t help the irony-impaired, cult indoctrinated believers who cannot question the lie that Fast and Furious was a, ” progressive democrat sponsored death by way of pushing guns to Mexican drug cartels."

Nothing can separate the willfully ignorant from their beliefs. “Liberals are commies”. “Obama is a Kenyan Marxist out to destroy America with death panels”. “Democrats want to take our guns”. Yadda, yadda, ad nauseam.

I have been a firearm owner all my life. I was lucky to come from a small town/rural county where gun ownership was a common responsibility, not a paranoid fantasy of some right to kill other humans.

Sanity requires some common sense firearm restrictions. Even the NRA doesn’t advocate the right to carry rocket propelled grenade launchers or 20mm Gatling guns. Who thinks it’s a good idea to arm someone convicted of domestic violence, or prison inmates, or psych ward patients?

But there are fools and racists out there who think Zimmerman should have his pistol handed back to him, with an "attaboy, go git 'em" slap on the back.

I don’t think banning guns is a practical idea, but banning firearm regulations is foolish, hard-headed and dangerous. Bottom line: Everyone reasonably sane is in favor of some gun control. Period.

Only one side refuses reasonably sane compromise. As usual.