This is not going to stop, its going to continue and it is going to get worse. And none of the usual solutions is going to help: no waiting periods, no background checks, no psychiatric hygiene progams, no pistol-packing grade school teachers. The problem is that Americans are pathologically attached to their guns, too much of the culture sees them as a solution to every problem and they are distributed too widely in the society. Only one thing is going to stop the killing: the banning of guns altogether. Period. They must be confiscated and destroyed, their ownership made a crime and only individuals specifically designated by law to bear them, such as cops, should be allowed to have them.

Forget the phony constitutional arguments, forget the redneck judges and the NRA, forget the wingnut minuteman militia fantasies, the apocalyptic prepper dreams and the skinhead racist paranoia. We have to make them illegal, full stop. It will take a long time, there will be a residue of firearms left in the society that will not evaporate fully for decades, and there will be smugglers and contraband weapons for a century; but we have to start soon, we need to get serious.

You all know me as a gun fancier and shooting sports hobbyist, I own several guns. I also derive a feeling of security by being armed in a violent society populated by gun nuts and awash in weapons, I don’t deny that. But my conviction I will never use a firearm illegally is no reason to encourage their distribution to everyone else, or anyone else, for that matter. Even if I do have a right to keep a gun in my home that does not give me the right to take one into yours, and certainly not into a public place.

And no, I do not consider it hypocrisy on my part if I refuse to preemptively and unilaterally disarm. The day we are ALL forced to do so is they day I will gladly do so myself. And yes, I said “forced”. After all, that’s what guns are all about, isn’t it? I don’t expect anyone to disarm before I do, but I am perfectly ready to disarm simultaneously with everyone else. And if this means many decent law-abiding gun owners have to be temporarily threatened with being victims of illegal weapons, then so be it. We brought it on ourselves by refusing to insist on fair and reasonable gun control while it was still possible. Its too late for that now. Tough shit.

Too many Americans simply cannot be trusted with guns. It is a deep flaw in our collective psyche, a disease in our culture, a perversion of our national psychology. It is not a brave pioneer spirit, it is a coward’s weapon brandished by malicious children. Americans have no more right to firearms than Koreans or Iranians have a right to nukes. Too many Americans forfeited that right long ago, none of us can claim it any more.