The Baffler, which I will go on record as saying is the best magazine in America (even though it is even more irregularly published than the magazine I work for), had a very interesting piece about the National Rifle Association several issues ago. It talked about a single NRA convention in the sixties when the organization changed from being a gun safety and riflemanship association to a militant gun nut lobby. It's really very interesting.

Now, if you ask the gun owner about the Second Amendment, they'd likely leave out the part about "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" and quote the "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" part (or just point to their shirt). We all know gun owners in America aren't regulating any sort of militias, and the government buys its own rifles at great cost to you. I mean, I guess we're making some sort of progress holding up our end of the deal by holding bake sales to raise money for troops' body and tank armor in Iraq. So maybe the true meaning of the Second Amendment hasn't been lost after all. I smell Fourth of July TV holiday special!

In any case, enough berating the gun lobby, because I write you today to suggest the decrepit and stagnant Democratic party make an <font color=red>historic compromise</font> with the NRA–if they get serious about gun safety, we'd welcome them into the big tent. If they went back to their training and safety roots, the Dems would offer a political stalemate or even give some territory back to the gun lobby. We have to face the fact that there are a lot of gun owners out there, and a lot of them newcomers to the demographic after 9/11. Do these people think they might see Bin Laden on the street and miss their chance at picking him off at the local Piggly Wiggly? Given 290-odd million Americans, you'd have to say there's at least a fair-sized city of such people lurking in the hinterlands. But the rest of them think that gun ownership is a necessary protection they are honor or duty-bound to provide. There are laws in Georgia mandating the head of each household own a gun. It's a part of our culture, (not just in the south), and we need to realize a central fact about America, which was revealed to me in this loosely quoted conversation with a friend the other day:

He: But they're totally misinterpreting the Second Amendment!
<br>Me: I know. It doesn't matter.
<br>He: What do you mean it doesn't matter?
<br>Me: Listen, gun ownership is very plainly a bad idea. If you own a gun, the bullets in it have the best shot at hitting you or a member of your family. Plus, if you have the gun and children, you need to keep it locked away where the kids can't find it and unloaded, which means it's much better suited to a first-degree murder than defense from home invaders at 3am in the dark.
<br>He: So why doesn't it matter?
<br>Me: It's like eating fast food. It's bad for you, we can't just make it illegal.
<br>He: Why not?
<br>Me: Do you understand how gun ownership laws work? The government can't take your guns away. The American government will never be able to confiscate the guns of its citizens. You know why? 'Cause they fucking have guns, that's why. We are not going to start a civil war to keep people from guns.

So instead of having the gun lobby have this canard that liberals want to take your guns away, why don't we let them get their way until 2008? There's really no point in fighting this tidal wave of misguided security-mindedness.

In a sociology class, I read an article detailing several studies indicating that the more television you watch, the more likely you are to think there is an urban crime wave going on. In fact, while violence in real life decreased in the 1990s, TV violence increased, <b> and so did the public perception that violence in real life was increasing as well.</b> As a matter of fact, I still have the course pack, which details elsewhere how cartoon (and similarly unrealistic violence) has <b>never, ever</b> been proven to make children or adults more violent in any measurable way, for example. But watching TV news (which must bear in mind the market-proven maxim, "if it bleeds, it leads") <b>does</b> make people more fearful in general. More disturbingly, the more televison they watch per week, the more children are likely (from junior high school on) to respond with authoritarian political and social viewpoints when surveyed in another study.
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What is "authoritarianism"? It is one of the most-studied constructs inthe social psychological literature, first identified by Adorno, et al. (1950), who measured authoritarianism with an "F-Scale" assesing "prefascist tendencies."
<br>…Since then, scholars have introduced many meausrement schemes for authoritarianism.
<br>…The research reported here deals with three aspects of authoritarianism: (a) attitudes about democratic political practices, such as attitudes toward free speech; (b) attitudes about personal social decisions, such as going along with the crowd; and (c) attitudes about the use of power in the family and school, for instance, following orders from teachers and parents.
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James Shanahan, <i>Television and Authoritarianism: Exploring the Concept of Mainstreaming</i>, Cornell University, 1996
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So America is just going to have to deal with guns. Gun owners are going to have to be assured. Not the way Florida has proposed dealing with guns, mind you, that is clearly too far. They wanted to make "shoot first, ask questions later" justifiable homicide if a terrorist situation is present. Doesn't it sound like this legislation was brewed up watching the 24 Season 1 DVD? And as thousands of aspiring Jack Ryans hit the streets (cue theme music!) the inevitable wave of random shootings will ensue.

So why make the compromise with the NRA? If the Democrats turn over the issue until the election, we'll be able to say, "we did it your way, gun owners of America, and you killed all those people, so why don't you at least get your act together about safety?"

I know it sounds crazy. But then, so is America, sometimes. The rest of the world, by the way, is just as crazy if not much, much crazier.