It isn't just your Uncle Ned – you know, the one with the gun rack and the NRA sticker on his pick-up truck – who believes in the adage that "an armed society is a polite society." Hell, this nation's own Supreme Court sided with that belief just a few short months ago.
Never mind that annually our nation has an astounding number of injuries and deaths caused by firearms for a country not fighting a war on its soil. It is, after all, "friendly fire" – Americans shooting Americans who, given the "armed society" adage and the rules of MTV's The Real World, must have stopped being polite.
I, for one, would feel much safer knowing that everyone around me carried a device specifically designed to cause severe corporeal damage and/or death in mere seconds. It is only once I am terrified of strangers, neighbors and friends who drink a bit too much and like to show off at parties, that I will feel free.
Alas, until the America I dream about comes to pass, we will have tragedies like the shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church late last month. If only the children who were performing a play when the shooting began had been armed with little Colt Pocket Nines. Hell, at minimum the ushers should have been packing some heat. It's about time folks in this country left for church thinking, "I'm going to worship God today. Better make sure I have singles for the collection plate and my handgun in case I have to blow someone away at the pulpit."
But arming the congregation is only the first step. Next, churches like Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist need to stop being so darned liberal. Did you know they not only welcomed gays to attend services but that they didn't even try to cure them?
Jim Adkisson did, which is part of why he walked into the church and opened fire with a shotgun. Because he couldn't get to liberal leaders, he said, he would kill people who elected them. And he planned to kill a lot of them. Had church members not subdued him as quickly as they did, the number of dead would have been much higher than two.
Adkisson, who told police he believes all liberals should be killed for destroying America, left a note in his car that gave the church's liberal ways as the reason behind his rampage.
Adkisson didn't come upon these ideas all on his own. When police searched his house they found books like "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by Michael Savage who once said, "Homosexuality is destroying America. Weepy liberalism is destroying America." Books by Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were also found.
Granted, reading books by right-wing blowhards doesn't in itself lead a guy to shoot up a liberal church. Adkisson is an unstable wacko who had no business having access to a firearm.
Still, I think Bob Carson of Now Public says it best. "For years the Conservatives have blamed rappers and the likes of Marilyn Manson for influencing their audience to commit acts of violence," Carson writes. "Some of these same conservatives need to look at this event and take a look at the hate they preach on a daily basis."
Amen to that.
