Too Many People Lighting Too Many Fuses
Excuse me, but I must have taken a wrong turn in Lancaster because I seem to be in Somalia.
Many in the gun-toting crowd, which seemed to out-number the considerable media and the sparse towns folk, seemed to agree. Some bearing arms said they were there to protect Kessler, who has claimed to have received multiple death threats in wake of the Internet firestorm. Some said they were providing “security” for the meeting. When it came time to open the small borough building for the public meeting, these armed men blocked the doors and prevented people from going inside. The mayor hand-selected members of the media who were granted access. Gilberton residents were admitted first. It’s a pro-gun crowd that goes on about United Nations code No. 7277, which Zangaro said declares international law intended to restrict and register weapons.
Leave aside for a moment the fact that political support from the NRA now should carry the same stigma as political support from the tobacco industry does. There are responsible members of the local and national government who have gone out of their way to mainstream this insanity. Many of them abandoned decency entirely and mainstreamed this insanity as a response to the massacre of schoolchildren last December. The Republican party, a number of timid Democrats, and the conservative “movement” have played footsie with dangerous woodland characters for far too long. This stuff can be used, but it cannot be fully controlled. This is not political debate. This is empowered, enabled paranoia, with firearms. This is not an exercise in democracy. This is a little touch of Munich, 1923 come to the forested exurbs. This stuff can be used, but it cannot be fully controlled, and something very bad is going to happen.