Since the most recent mass shooting, at a high school in Parkland Florida, the gun control debate has reached a new level of hysteria.  When emotions run high, reason is usually a casualty, but the abdication from logic now being displayed by both camps over how best to stop sick-minded males – and so far this is an all-male club – from committing mass murder in our schools would be laughable if the subject were not so deadly serious.  Straight-faced calls for the banning of all semi-automatic weapons are countered by calls to turn schools into fortresses. Neither side seems even mildly interested in finding any middle ground between “no guns” and “more guns”, nor will either admit that their proposed solutions will do nothing more than nibble around the edges of the problem.  This impasse, deepened by hurled insults and angry protests, is beginning to look unbreakable.

That is particularly sad, because there are doable policy ideas on both agendas that might prevent some – by no means all – armed psychos from shooting up our schools.  Universal background checks that ask the right questions, better communication and data sharing between agencies, buybacks of bump stocks, limits on magazine capacity, higher age qualifications for buying semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, more effective methods to identify and report those who are mentally at-risk – all of those measures are doable.  So too are measures to “harden” schools, such as arming and training those school personnel who are capable and willing, employing more resource officers, making classroom doors assault-proof, upgrading security camera systems to work in real time and giving onsite officers and local law enforcement instant smartphone access to camera feeds so that they can quickly pinpoint a shooter’s location and armament.  No doubt other workable ideas will surface.  Smarter people than I will think of them.

What is not doable is an outright ban on the manufacture and sale of semi-automatic weapons, assault or otherwise, as is being demanded by Parkland student activists. There are some 15 million AR-15 style rifles and many millions more high-capacity (10 or more rounds) magazines already in circulation.  Imagine the backlash that government attempts to confiscate them would provoke, the Second Amendment notwithstanding.  Additionally, nearly all the handguns in circulation are semi-automatic.  Any attempt at a ban of such magnitude would only drive the entire firearm community onto the Dark Net, if not into open revolt.

Equally not-doable, or certainly inadvisable, is the suggestion that school administrators turn their buildings into armed camps staffed by nervous teacher/warriors who want nothing to do with either end of a gun.  But anyone who contends that a school with a sign over the door proclaiming it a “Gun Free Zone” is safer from attack that a school whose sign reads, “ Certain personnel in this building may be armed and are authorized to defend inhabitants with deadly force” cannot claim to be the voice of reason in this discussion.

Sadder still is the overarching fact that there is nothing – nothing – we can do, radically or reasonably, to completely insulate our schools from danger.   But even if we can’t confiscate every gun or confront every shooter, any incident we do manage to mitigate or prevent will save lives.  At the margins we can make a difference, but only if we stop the name-calling and sloganeering and start listening to each other.

There is much that might be done to prevent at least some school shootings if the pro and anti-gun factions could crawl even a few feet out of their dogmatic corners, but so far both sides look to be more vested in defending their ideologies than in defending the kids.  That is by far the saddest fact of all.

I have referenced the Colorado Centrist Project in this space.  The organization’s mission is exactly what the name suggests.  It is dedicated to fielding and supporting independent candidates who might someday break the partisan ice jam that has become government’s status quo.

The project recently renamed itself Unite Colorado (UC) and affiliated with the national independent organization Unite America.  The Centrist cause has been gaining momentum, much to the chagrin of Democrat and Republican operatives, so when UC showed up backing a few independent candidates for state House and Senate, the Major Party Mafia decided enough was enough.  The Democrats were the first to mobilize, and the Colorado Pols* website authored the first strike.

Colorado Pols (CP) is the leftwing equivalent of Breitbart News, committed to the defense of the Democrat party and the public disparagement of anything or anyone who poses a threat to its influence.  Aside from snide inferences and general effrontery (“so-called Centrist Project” “failed congressional candidate Nick Troiano”) and out-of-context quotes (“It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issues”), CP’s hit piece relies mostly on the old conspiracy theory of vote-splitting.

Independent candidates, so goes the myth, do nothing but draw votes away from one party which allows the other party’s candidate to win with less than a majority.  Think Ross Perot, supposedly sucking the Presidency away from G. H. W. Bush and dropping it in Bill Clinton’s lap.  Why throw away your vote? CP asks.  Are you stupid?  Stick with us, or the Evil Others will seize power!  A vote for an independent is a vote for Donald Trump!!!

What the Dems are trying to paper over with this line of distraction is that in Colorado there are more unaffiliated (read independent) voters than there are Democrats, and if trends continue independents will very soon outnumber Republicans, who are losing registrants in droves – thank you, Mr Trump.  If Colorado independents all “threw away” their votes on an actual independent candidate that candidate would win.  Moreover, if an independent candidate or two should prevail in Colorado Senate races, neither party would hold a majority in that chamber, and both parties would be beholden to non-dogmatics in order to govern.  Does that not sound like a better alternative to the rancorous partisan stalemate we are living with?

The CP piece concludes by stating that the “post-partisan” branding of the Centrists is really a “post values” campaign, as if the “values” of the two major parties are anything more than a sop to their extremist bases and cudgels with which to thwack any who wander from the Party Line.  More than anything, the Democrats and Republicans appear to see their “values” as an excuse not to cooperate with, or even show common respect for, each other.  The only ”value”  they seem to actually value is power.

There are some easily readable tea leaves at the bottom of this bitter cup.  The only reason that Colorado Pols is the first major party proxy to start attacking the Centrist Project is because the present Unite Colorado slate is seen by Democrats as a greater threat to them.  But the Republican response will be the same or worse as soon as the state GOP wakes up to the budding threat from the Center.  Because the emergence of a strong political movement not their own is the worst nightmare of Democrats and Republicans alike, and they will use every weapon in their arsenal to derail such a movement.  The stronger the Centrist movement becomes, the bigger the guns we will see unlimbered against it.  Wait and see.

So, Colorado independents, we have a choice to make.  Do we continue to support evermore dogmatic politicians who offer us character assassination in place of reasoned debate?  Or do we try something else?  If this CP article proves anything, it is that state Democrats. at least, are scared spitless that we might.  I’m not calling anyone stupid, but I will note the fallacy of reason that is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.

* coloradopols.com – *”It’s Official: The Centrist Project Thinks You’re Stupid”

Colorado lost another law enforcement officer last weekend, a young husband and father, killed in an ambush perpetrated by a deranged cop-hater who staged a domestic disturbance and shot up the responders from behind his bedroom door.  To compound his unspeakable act, he live-streamed the entire atrocity on social media.

As shocking and disturbing as this cold-blooded act was, it was compounded by TV stations’  unfathomable decision to air parts of this evil bastard’s broadcast on the nightly news. Bad enough that the news media repeated his name and paraded his life history in front of the world, but to give him actual face time?  Exactly what purpose does that serve? The gunman died in the lethal exchange so outing him removed no threat to the community, in fact quite the opposite.  Showing his face and his sick manifesto  only serves to provoke and encourage other sick, angry individuals to seek media glory by imitating him. That, and adding to the misery of those closest to the people he hurt.

I am sick and angry, too.  Sick of seeing the names and faces of these killers plastered on the same screens as the grieving families and colleagues of their victims.  Angry that our mass media puts ratings above the feelings of violence victims.  Purveyors of “news” are fond of excusing such behavior by citing the public’s “right to know.”  What about our right to not know?

If one media outlet would have the spine to keep the names and faces of mass killers out of its stories I would be a viewer for life.  As for the rest of them I will wait, in vain I’m sure, for an explanation.

The special Senatorial election in Alabama is over, and the era of the political earthquake continues.  Voters in this reddest of red states, a year after elevating a clinically narcissistic, linguistically challenged, misogynistic Republican to the country’s highest office, decided for the first time in 25 years to send a Democrat to Washington.  Both parties were quick to get on message about the result.  Both messages are predictably laden with partisan spin, and are a sad indication that neither party has gotten the real message.

Republicans assured us that Doug Jones’s win was not a refutation of Donald Trump or his/their policies, and that Roy Moore would have won easily if not for a Democrat-orchestrated smear campaign.  A more reasonable assessment might be that Alabama voters couldn’t stomach being represented by Moore, an accused sexual predator who also happens to be Elmer Gantry on steroids.  His alleged mall-trolling aside, Moore is a disgusting anachronism even in the Deep South, and his loss was a gift to the Republican party at a time when its image is already layered in mud.  Making the best of President Donald J. Trump has put the GOP on shaky moral and ethical ground, and having to support and defend Moore any longer would have stripped Republicans of any pretense of decency that might be left to them.  They already seemed hellbent on stripping themselves of any vestige of fiscal conservatism by concocting a tax reform plan that drills a trillion-dollar hole in the concept of a balanced Federal budget.  Has the Party of Lincoln become the party of misogyny and hypocrisy?

At the other end of Dream Street, Democrats are telling us that Jones’s victory is a referendum on all things Republican and the first falling rock of a liberal landslide that will return Congress to Dem control no later than 2020.  To prepare for this glorious occasion, the party has initiated a Reform Convention the apparent goal of which is to codify more, not fewer, extreme planks in its platform.  The Dems’ bewildering takeaway from the presidential election continues to be that Hillary Clinton was not liberal enough, and their response will be to anoint an aging, blustering European Socialist the party’s de facto standard-bearer.  Even if Bernie Sanders doesn’t run in 2020, whoever the Democrats nominate will be mouthing his words.  At a time when most Americans want to see more cordiality in Congress, the Democrats seem prepared to declare a full-blown class war.  In a country that pollsters say is still moderately conservative, this approach may get headlines, but will it get votes?  In his victory address Jones, a former US Attorney, sounded like a moderate Democrat.  How will he fit into the Party of Bernie?

So as the world of politics as we thought we knew it provides yet another election night surprise, both Republicans and Democrats appear unable to see beyond their respective dogmas. As both camps retreat further from the political center, are voters to be stuck choosing between government by the Old Testament and take-no-prisoners Populism?

Hopefully not.  A Centrist movement is gaining momentum nationwide, and every time the American electorate is presented with a lesser-of-two-evils choice by the two-party system, that movement gets a little stronger.

How much longer are we going to allow the political extremes to pick our candidates?  I’ll bet that many Alabama Republicans are asking themselves that question right about now.  And if the Bernie Revolution comes to fruition, many Democrats will be asking it as well.

Another week, another under-the-radar lunatic goes on a killing spree with his AR-15, and another round of recriminations from gun control advocates leveled at Congress for not passing stricter gun laws, at the NRA for existing at all, and at law-abiding gun owners for not saying “enough” and remorsefully schlepping their weapons to the local police station to give them up.

Gun ownership advocates, as usual, managed to throw off this guilt and continue to insist that putting more guns in more places, carried by trained individuals, will deter the maniacs or at least minimize the carnage.  Each group cites statistics supporting its position, bringing to mind the old saw about statistics being used the same way a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.

We do have a lot of guns – a recent NY Times article alleges that Americans own some 300 million – four out of every ten private firearms in the world.  We also have a lot of anonymous, deeply troubled individuals who are one fight with the in-laws away from going postal.  No law of God or man can be expected to keep all of society’s crackpots away from all those lovely, deadly weapons, and the gun argument is distracting us from another discussion that we desperately need to have.

Crazy people killing other people – not just with guns, but with rental trucks, homemade bombs or box cutters – is a relatively new phenomenon here.  The U.S. has always had a surplus of firearms and lunatics-in-waiting, but the growing number of high-casualty events seems correlated with our growing fascination with – and tolerance of – brutal, graphic conflict in every form of our entertainment, from TV and movies to the internet to video games to sports, even music. Today, more than ever, potential assassins are at risk of having their worst impulses constantly reinforced whenever they tune in or log on.  Less violence soaked cultures (including a fairly recent version of our own) have suffered fewer, and smaller, mass-casualty incidents, no matter how many guns (or rental trucks) their citizens have access to.  But today America has normalized violence to the point where a crazed assailant has to kill at least a dozen innocent people in order to get noticed.

Focusing on guns as either the root of, or the counter to, this savagery is a cop-out.  Those 300 million weapons are an effect, not the cause, of the culture we have allowed to evolve; a world in which “fake” violence is so pervasive that it has become background static.  Whenever some tortured soul decides to embrace the real thing, we seldom pause to consider his motivation. We are too busy arguing about his methodology.

We have to start recognizing the fake violence that surrounds us for the empathy suppressant that it is and seeing real violence as the insidious cultural sickness that it is.  Until we do there will be more – and given the glorifying publicity lavished on them by the media, worse – incidents of mass murder in our future.  If we really want to stop the bleeding, the discussion has to go beyond the “how” and the “who”.  We need to look in the mirror and ask, “why?”

*Rehumanize Yourself – Sting and The Police