Poor Rebecca doesn't get us gun nuts

My 20-month-old nephew loves Elmo and Dora. He also has started making explosion and gunfire noises.

I get the inevitability of little boys' fascination for guns.

What I can't figure out are the men and sometimes women who don't grow out of the gun-crazy stage of childhood, who need to have a handgun on their hips at all times, who need their neighbors to notice.

What I don't get is why Rebecca worries about people who have guns who are of no threat to her. I'd say she's the one who needs to grow up a bit. Every day, she walks by people whose very fists could punch her, whose fingers could gouge out her eyes, or who carry pocket knives that could cut her jugular.

But they don't.

Ten of them stormed the West Valley City Council meeting last week to back up Travis Deveraux, a 36-year-old credit card company worker who was detained by police last December while exercising with his Smith & Wesson.

Notice the flair there? Stormed! Like these 10 guy ran in there, guns a' blazin', screaming some sort of war cry. Instead, I'm willing to bet each one of them was as polite and courteous as the unarmed people.

It's in the Constitution, their thinking goes. They are "peaceably going about their business while armed," standing on the watchtower, the last line of defense against government tyranny and crazed criminals. We should thank them.

Well, you're not going to do much against Gov't tyranny with a pistol, but the crazed criminals? Well, yeah. Duh. How does she think the police do it? With harsh language and a steely gaze?

I understand the thrill of firing a Glock (I've done it), the euphoria of hitting the center of a target (and that too), generations of family deer-hunting weekends and the legitimate self-preservation instincts of Utah's elected concealed weapon carriers.

Ah, she's shot a gun therefor is an expert! And the elected concealed weapon carriers! Nothing like licking the boots of your masters, eh Rebecca.

But the OpenCarry movement is a mystery to me. What kind of psychology - overcompensation, paranoia, antisocial personality - is behind that thinking?

We have facts, they have penis references.

Maybe Rebecca could do some actual reporting and interview these small dicked, anti-social paranoids. Nah. It's easier to use stereotypes. Maybe next she can ponder if gooks and chinks think it's always too bright outside and that's why they squint.

Steven Gunn, an attorney and board member of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, believes it's pure ego.

And Steven Gunn (Holy shit. That can't be his real name) also believes that guns have magical abilities that control humans' minds and force them to commit crimes they would have never even considered had they not had one.

...

"Second Amendment questions aside," says Springwood, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, "the real debate seems to me a cultural and social one: Do we want a society in which it is an unconscious emblem of everyday life that folks move about with 'portable killing machines' strapped to their bodies?"

Gah... It's hard to even battle idiots like that.