Has America’s Love Affair with Guns Come to an End?

Everyone knows that guns are as American as apple pie, right? After all, we’re the only country in the entire world which gives gun ownership the same Constitutional protection that we give to free speech.

So, it should come as no surprise that Americans own somewhere between 300 million and 400 million guns stashed away in their homes, and it should also come as no surprise when some asshole walks into an office building in midtown Manhattan and shoots the place up.

Of course, those occasional mass shootings tend to obscure the fact that every year, year in and year out, thirty thousand to forty thousand people are shot to death and another hundred thousand take a bullet somewhere in their bodies but survive.

I went to my first NRA show in 1980, and what I heard at that show is what you will hear at every gun show, which is that we need guns to protect ourselves not only from all those bad guys out there, but also from the government which is too often in the hands of those goddamn liberals who want to take all our guns away.

Meanwhile, every year there’s another horrific shooting, or maybe two or three horrific shootings, and all those goddamn liberals get together, wring their hands but just can’t come up with a plan to eliminate gun ownership that will pass muster in the…