The abundance of chatter about the Tucson massacre has consisted mainly of the predictable smug psychobabble that no matter how many innocent people are killed by sociopaths who obtained guns legally or illegally, there is no possibility of any sane attempts to curtail the murder and mayhem. Whether to curtail the sale of ammunition like the assault weapon clips, or to ban the sale of assault weapons themselves, or to keep a register of persons who have made a public career of engaging in antisocial if not sociopathic behavior, the response seems to be the same, "guns don't kill people, people kill people" or some such tripe. Ned is moved to wonder, along with one of his idols the NYT's Bob Herbert, what in hell is the matter with us?
Ned thinks of the 9 year old child murdered by the sociopath, but he also thinks of her family. Those people's lives will never be the same--something has been stolen from them and there is no way for them to get it back. Their lives may even be ruined, unless they can console themselves by some Christianist mumbo-jumbo. Then we must multiply that anguish, which to any parent is not measurable, by the tens of thousands of families each year whose lives are crushed by the gun madness. But nothing is ever done.
Ned therefore has decided to call a spade a spade: those people who oppose any rational gun control measures are so contemptible as to actually be beneath contempt, and Ned would consign them to the lowest levels of hell.
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