“We have met the enemy, and they are us”

As quite often happens, I take a pot-shot at Arizona politics — “If anyone was too poor and unfortunate to get a transplant, ice-flow for them, baby!” — and some idiot goes and shoots a congresswoman. In where else? Arizona.
News events quickly race ahead of my comments; making my comments stale and inappropriate.
A good friend of mine said “two thumbs up” regarding yesterday’s blog, but with Gabby Giffords fighting for her life, his congratulations seem unfortunately stale.
So now I fly this wondering if it too will become stale; the possibility Giffords might die.
The Pima County sheriff in Tucson, Clarence Dupnik, said it best. He’s worried about the vitriolic level of political discourse our nation has fallen to — that Arizona seems to be the nexus.
....the influence of blowhards on talk-radio and blind Internet-posts.
I’m reminded of a discussion I overheard a few months ago in the Canandaigua YMCA locker-room.
“Let’s go down to Washington, Joe. Take our guns and take out that Pelosi lady.”
Yep. As expounded in the Godfather movies, life is cheap. It doesn’t take much to kill someone.
I’m reminded of NY Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino versus reporter Fred Dicker: “I’ll take you out, buddy!”
A few well-placed bullets to change the course of history.
This all leaves me wondering about the value of the constitutional right to bear arms.
My brother firmly believes having a gun in his house would protect him from intruders. No matter more-than-likely that gun would kill him.
It’s a right I more-or-less agree with, except it presumes the rationality and temperance of the arms-bearers.
Yet we always seem to have irrational and intemperate arms-bearers, egged on by talk-radio and the Internet.
We seem to have acquiesced to frenzied attempts to offset terrorists.
Sometimes I wonder if we should more limit the right to bear arms, to offset the terrorists among us.
As Pogo said long ago: “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)