Let me begin by saying this: I’m a liberal who likes guns. Guns are incredibly efficient technology, and I like efficiency. They make a terrific noise, and there are times when I enjoy a loud noise. I like the fact that you can point them at an object and a hole will appear in that object, and I like that it takes some skill to make that hole appear where you want it to appear. If you shoot a handgun at night, flame comes out of the barrel — and that’s pretty. Even prettier is tracer fire at night. So yes, I like guns.

I just don’t trust anybody to own one.

The fetishization of firearms reveals the very worst of American culture. It makes already paranoid people even more paranoid and already stupid people even more stupid. Witness Representative Louis Gohmert, a Republican from Texas (and I don’t want to cast aspersions on Texas, but lawdy folks, what the fuck is wrong with you people?). Gohmert has proven himself capable of superhuman feats of stupidity in the past (he once argued that the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline was good for the environment because it gave caribou a place to have sex), but in an interview this morning he took stupid to a new level. Gohmert claimed last night’s mass murder at the premier of the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado was a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.” That’s not just stupid, it’s delusional. He also wondered why nobody in the audience didn’t pull a firearm and return fire — I guess because one person shooting in a dark movie theater just isn’t enough. But hey, returning fire — that’s the Christian thing to do. (Gohmert, by the way, teaches Sunday School at the Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas; it’s unknown how many of the children who attend his lectures are packing heat.)

Louis Gohmert

Some people on far right websites like FreeRepublic are even asserting the mass murder is part of a plan by the Obama administration — either to seize all the weapons in the US before the election in November or as part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to seize control of the US. Or both. Others are claiming the shooting was part of an Occupy Wall Street plan to…well, nobody seems to know why OWS would shoot innocent strangers in a movie theater, but fucking hippie faggot communists dammit they’re capable of anything — I mean, what sort of people play drums in a circle? And then, of course, there were the people who assumed that since the shooting took place on the first night of Ramadan, it had to be a jihadist attack. Stupid, stupid fucking people.

There are three things we can be certain of. First, there will be calls from a few liberals for reasonable gun control legislation. Second, there will be claims from conservatives that existing gun control laws are already too strict. And finally, nothing will change.

Right now in the United States it’s almost as easy to buy a firearm as it is to buy a toaster. Sure, if you go to a licensed gun dealer, you’ll have to fill out a form and show some identification–but you’d have to be stupider than Louis Gohmert if you can’t figure out an easy way to get around that. Even if you are that stupid, you can still go to a gun show this weekend and buy any number of weapons without filling out any forms or showing any identification at all. Or you can go to an estate sale, or an auction, or a garage sale and buy weapons. Or if it’s too hot to go outside, you buy weapons through mail-order sportsman catalogs or on the internet and have them delivered right to your door.

This didn’t change after the Columbine School shootings, it didn’t change after the Virginia Tech school shootings, it didn’t change after the shooting at the Gabrielle Giffords event, it hasn’t changed despite all the mass murders that take place in the US every year — and sad to say, it’s not going to change now.

Here is a true thing: it’s too goddamn easy to buy firearms in the U.S. Don’t give me that shit about ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ If you actually think that’s true, then you’re just as fucking stupid as Louis Gohmert. Guns make it easier to kill people, and to kill people in larger numbers. You tell me that this guy in Colorado could have have killed as many people if he’d used a bomb? Fine, I’m all for making it more difficult to make bombs too. But it takes some skill and patience to build a bomb, whereas any nitwit can walk into a gun show and buy as many guns as his credit card will allow. You tell me that Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms? I’m with you there, but brother that was written in the last half of the 18th century when a good marksman might have been able to fire four rounds per minute in a fucking musket. I’d be willing to allow you to own all the muskets you want. I guarantee you if the Aurora gunman had been armed with a musket, Colorado families wouldn’t be burying a dozen kids this week.

Here’s one of the problems we face. Right now liberals are saying “This isn’t a time for politics; we should be thinking about the families” and conservatives are saying “This is a tragedy, but you can’t punish honest law-abiding gun owners because of the actions of one crazy person.” And I’ll say “This IS a time for politics, because that’s the only way we can reduce the incidence of these sorts of mass murders.” And I’ll say “Placing reasonable limits on the types of firearms a person can own and the size of the magazines for those firearms isn’t punishing anybody but people who intend to shoot a whole lot of people in a short amount of time.”

What happened in Aurora is a community tragedy. The national tragedy is that the firearm debate in the US is controlled by the stupidest fucking people on the planet.

NOTE: I have to confess to an error. I suggested nothing had changed as a result of the shooting at the Gabrielle Giffords political event. I was wrong. Four months after the shootings, the State of Arizona passed legislation making the Colt single-action army revolver the State’s official sidearm.