It has been quite a week. Stark yet dreamlike. I made it to the office for a few hours yesterday, needing to ease back into things. It was such a lovely day and the cabin fever was intense that it was a relief to get back to the office environment.
I had a scrap of paper from Vickie-the-Maid reminding me she required another jug of Murphy’s Oil Soap for next month’s cleaning, and it was one of the things that floated in and out my fevered brain through the fever of the week
The flu- if that is what it was- carried all the overheated thinking down the rapids of fever time, which either vanished down the rabbit hole or stretched out in the night, shivering, watching the illuminated digits of the clock slowly- so slowly- advance across the hours when the powers of darkness are exalted and sleep is the furthest thing away.
Murphy’s Oil Soap floated through couple blood-soaked Steven Hunter novels and a stream of business traffic all weirdly commingled. And the feeling of vague doom- one of the causes of which I discovered this morning.
Coffee! Damnit! I blinked in the darkness of the kitchen. I forgot to get coffee!
I got the Oil Soap on the way home- and a loaf of artisan jalapeno cheddar bread to celebrate the return of appetite- and completely forgot the beans that would enable me to start the day. I normally run out of Dazbog Russian Roast about three quarters of a bag before the next shipment comes in from Denver. I usually remember to have a backup bag of something- Starbucks, maybe- in the larder, but the fever had driven it clean out of my mind, even as I had clutched to the idea of the Oil Sap.
Damn. A morning without coffee? Impossible. I went to the cupboard. No beans. A small box of Gavalia, held in case Raven came, and him in his grave almost a year. It was pre-ground and ancient but….decaf. Worse than useless. Then I remembered. To the left hand side were several foil pouches of hotel coffee, which I used to harvest on all those weeks on the road. There were three from an outfit called “The Gourmet Bean,” a bulk provider to some chain of hotels I obviously spent a week with. Marriot? No idea. When was the last time the Company let me go on the road for a week?
Jesus, I murmured. These pouches have been lurking here since the Bush Administration. Before the housing bubble. Before Hope and Change became just hope they would go away and stop bothering me.
Now, I was going to try to start the day on six year old coffee beans. The earth shuddered under my feet.
I just flinched at the flash of lightning in the fogy dawn, counting in my head the seconds-to-miles to boom. Six. Almost here.
My balcony door was open a crack, and the wind pressed it closed. “Finish the paragraph,” I thought, “then batten the hatches.” Then the blow came, hurling the door open against the end of the long turned-aluminum rod keeper with the latch break and spring on the end to keep it from shattering off the hinges. (It has before. Doors that close are good). Then the chill gray rain came, banishing for now the warm moist tongue of Spring.
What stuns me is the willingness of our elected clowns to forge off in altogether new avenues of idiocy, and I say that in the context of the perfectly serviceable Gun Control Act of 1968, the result of a rational discussion between both sides of the aisle in the wake of the political killings of that sad and unlamented decade.
I think I have debunked the “40% gun sales without background check” number the President throws around. I don’t know- been sick. But the number shows up in all the news reports and “informed commentary” about what we really really need to do RIGHT NOW. The talking points cite a 2004 study, which says no such thing.
That study says they don’t know the percentage- the only estimate came from a phone survey of 250 homes in 1994, with a margin of error that could mean 30% as much as 40%- almost twenty years ago- and four years before instant background checks were required for most sales. Misleading at best, mendacious at worst.
Anyway, I was surprised to discover something the other day while on the way to something else. There are indeed ways to buy guns on the internet without background checks- a few. They are sites that aggregate private sellers and private buyers, which theoretically could result in sales outside the current set of laws. But as with all of this, it has been regulated within an inch of its life already. You cannot mail or ship a weapon except to a FFL holder- which brings almost any non-hand-to-hand transaction into the background check universe. Avoidance would only work with hand delivery, something obviously which would restrict the utility of internet sales.
A hand-delivery network outside the USPS/FEDEX/UPS universe? Maybe a business opportunity for some enterprising soul, but not exactly a Niagara of guns, regardless of what anyone tells you, and not the source of any weapon used in any of the poster horror crimes.
Insert standard disclaimer here: “I am not a Republican. I am opposed to the mentally ill being illegally in possession of firearms, I am opposed to murder, and particularly that of innocents. I am also opposed to the folly of “gun free zones.” Should I ever find myself in a situation where some deranged man wants to make himself famous, I want to be able to shoot back. This is an increasingly dysfunctional society in which my generation has worked mightily and tirelessly to undermine the institutions that used to keep us generally on a civil keel.”
Unilateral disarmament has never worked to make anyone safer that I am aware of. If you can think of one, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Anyway, as usual, this is a tempest in a teapot, but no good crisis should be left unexploited to solve a myriad of issues for the public good, right? I will be very interested to see what sort of amendments pop onto the current legislation.
Apparently the “compromise” fronted by the pro-gun Senators from PA and WVA was actually written by Chuckie Schumer, who has previously questioned the legitimacy and enduring properties not only of the Second Amendment, but the First. His towering New York arrogance has always irritated me, and surpasses the Social Follies of the Mayor of New York City, which makes him that more threatening to what I like to think of as my way of life.
So, I trust him as far as I can throw him.
This has all- I repeat all- been previously regulated and the laws are on the books. There might be a case for further restricting what are clearly commercial sales by individuals to other individuals unknown to them- but that is as far as I can go.
If I choose to give a weapon to someone in my family, or to a friend I know, that is nobody’s business but ours, and off the counter. Not interested in asking Mr. Schumer if it is OK with him.
Naturally, this is will all be waiting on the next crisis, ready to go. Our rights- as amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968 and augmented by the Brady Act of 1994, matched with the existing requirement for Instant Background checks- should be plenty.
As we knew from the beginning of this crisis, and the one before that, and the one before that, the problem is mental illness. Everything that happened at VA Tech, Aurora and Sandy Hook was illegal on so many counts already that it hardly seems necessary to pile on new rules. Why don’t we try enforcing the ones on the books?
Unless, of course, this isn’t about that Sandy Hook at all, but rather something else. The number of guns purchased since 2008 suggest I am not alone in that belief.
But in his usual soaring rhetoric, Vice President Smokin’ Joe Biden, a man who famously lives in his own space-time continuum, says that we don’t have the resources to enforce what is already the law. So, the answer must be more laws, right?
Let’s get past this, shall we, and start talking about how we more effectively loot our children and grandchildren to pay for our fat retirements?
I gotta stop drinking really old coffee. Maybe they didn’t control caffeine back then.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com