Looney Tunes I

A buddy alerted me to this story that ran yesterday on NPR. Apparently the sales of guns of all kinds and ammunition have gone through the roof since Obama was elected president. And why, you might logically inquire. Because, dear friend, people think Obama is going to take away their guns. Here's what a gun shop owner says:

. . . people are buying the guns to protect themselves because they perceive Obama's policies as socialist and rewarding those "people who are not working hard." They are also afraid, he says, of more restrictive gun laws.

"Everybody was scared he was going to take the ammo away or he was going to tax it out of sight on the prices," [the gun shop owner] says. "So people started stocking up, buying half a lifetime to a lifetime supply of ammo all at one time."

Right. So let's think about this for a minute. We don't have such things happening without prerequisites. In this case, I can think of several, none particularly encouraging:

1. Probably the most striking of all, for this to happen, you must have a population who are terrified of "people who are not working hard." This is code language. What it means is "poor people," and specifically black poor people, or to a lesser extent, Mexican poor people. In America, don't start analyzing any social phenomenon without first considering race.
2. A population totally ignorant of the meaning of "socialism."
3. A population credulous and uninformed enough to have swallowed whole the entire Republican smear against Obama in the election. Moreover, who still believe it after the man has been in office for two and half months. This in itself is no great endorsement of the intelligence of the American people.
4. A society that blesses and encourages the notion that such people should be able to buy as many guns as they want . . . and provides thousands of outlets for them to do so.

Even if the ammo shortage turns out to be permanent, (and would that that would happen!), not to worry. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of people who think Barack Obama is more of a threat to their liberty than the neo-fascist who just left office. Makes you feel real safe, doesn't it?