The Spectre of the Gun

A mentally disturbed young man has killed dozens of people in a senseless and horrific act of violence. Unfortunately, if you can count on anything when tragedies like this occur, it's the reprehensible and shameless pandering of our political class:

1. President Bush can't even wait for all the wounded to be evacuated before publicly reaffirming his complete and utter obeisance to the NRA's agenda of surface-to-air missiles for all.
2. Same with John McCain.
3. John Derbyshire, a repulsive troglodyte who excretes "columns" for NRO, calls the students cowards for not fighting back. You may recall this feckless thug's last contribution to the national dialogue: calling for execution of British marines and sailors for not fighting to the death against Iranian pirates. The link here is to Wonkette, since NRO might accidentally grow a conscience and pull this verbal pornography.
4. Another semi-moronic Right-Wing shill insists on blaming the killings on Pakistani terrorists, despite absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the claim, beyond her astonishing inability to distinguish between South Koreans and Pakistanis.
5. Other assorted idiots lament, again on the basis of absolutely nothing but their own gun-fetishist fantasies, that the tragedy would have been averted if not for pernicious liberal gun control laws that prevented the faculty and student body from being strapped while in class.
6. Some voices on the Left call for more gun-control legislation, in the absence of any evidence that any gun control short of total confiscation would have had any effect. In fairness, though, at least one Voice on the Left draws a line between this horror and not more gun control, but the lack of mental health resources.
7. The foreign press never misses an opportunity to sniff with disdain at the "violent Americans."

I am no knee-jerk fan of gun control, and my opposition can be summed up in two words: "Wounded Knee." And like the Lakota, my ancestors know exactly what happens to unarmed people whom the Federal government decides are inconvenient. As I have said before, the easy availability of guns, in and of itself, does not and cannot account for the appalling levels of violence in this country, never mind the kind of catastrophes like Virginia Tech just experienced. No, the truly scary realization is that it's not, in fact, the guns: it's us. This country is infected with violence, saturated in it, swimming in it. It permeates every aspect of our culture. And whether obviously unhinged young men with violent fantasies can easily and quickly buy handguns or not, that cultural pathogen is not going away.

UPDATE: From Kos. Great minds think alike, sadly.

UPDATE 2: Neal Boortz, another despicable hate-talk troglodyte, hops aboard "blame the victims" bandwagon. And Mark Steyn. Good Lord, but these people are just beneath contempt!