You got to be kidding me...

Here it is, folks! Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller has a funny screed on gun control in the Philadelphia Inquirer today. Unintentionally funny that is, because it appears to have been written by a turing machine set to "moonbat":

Any fool can kill a deer. I know, because I've almost done it several times. All that's required is a car driven at a relatively good speed, 30 miles an hour should do it, near a wooded area around dusk or later.

Voila, venison a la Camry.

Congratulations, you can drive a car. I wouldn't quit your job and head for the comedy circuit just yet though.

The less "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" rings true in contemporary America, the more the gun culture revs up its high-caliber lobbying and propaganda machine.

I guess this makes a certain sense if you consider militias in the Tim McVeigh sense, but I wonder--what does guarantee security in today's world? Karma? PC politics? Group hugs? We'll have to guess, because she leaves that sentence hanging and charges on to the next disjointed thought:

We've made smokers pariah, forcing them out to the street. Alcoholism and drug abuse, once private demons, have become public crusades. Abolishing trans fats is a civic battle legislated by urban councils.

She says that like it's a good thing. No really, she does. No further comment needed--what kind of person thinks that way?

Any politician running for higher office has to kiss the long barrel of the NRA and gun fetishists, preferably by praising gun ownership and going hunting - a dwindling passion - to show how authentically American he is.

Nevermind the lame oral sex innuendo (this anti-gay comment deeply offends me!) What blows me away here is the complete lack of self-awareness. She's doesn't like guns, so anyone who does must have a "fetish". There's no such thing as having different interests than you, those other people are just savages who need a good 'Christian' education! Ms. Heller would feel right at home in Victorian times--well, long as you kept her from hearing the word "Victorian".

"This is trying to perpetuate the myth of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, the legacy of Buffalo Bill," says Joan Burbick, author of "Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy." "Tying gun rights to civil rights, transforming Americans into an armed citizenry, coincided with the civil rights riots."

Race, she argues, has plenty to do with it.

Again, Heller doesn't follow up on these assertions, maybe assuming that her readers already "know" that everything she doesn't like is "racist". But this bit about gun ownership suddenly appearing with the civil rights movement? In a sense, it did--among blacks who exercised their right to defend themselves from marauding white racists. Of course that's not the point being made here, but I thought Micheal Bellesiles was debunked a long time ago. You can't teach an old dog new tricks though, and the hard left will probably never give up its clumsy efforts to throw inconvenient history down the memory hole. The game of mental whack-a-mole goes on...

[406] people were murdered in Philadelphia last year. And here's where generalizations hold up. Most of the victims were young. Most of them were poor. Most of them were black. Most of them were killed with guns.

Our problems are bigger than guns. But guns are our problem.

Oh the irony--"here's where generalizations hold up" followed immediately by a pure example of irrelevant generalizations leading to a wrong conclusion. I'm sure a psychologist could write an entire book on the conviction that murderers somehow wouldn't kill anyone if they couldn't use a gun, but I'll just substitute Archie Bunker, speaking to his daughter when she said something like the above: "Would it make you feel better, little girl, if they was pushed outta windows?"

And now for the truly weird:

The myth of the fighter permeates throughout consumerism, Gap Kids fatigues in blue and pink.

Well as long as we're dealing in strawmen, I wonder how Ms. Heller feels about, say, Palestinian children who regularly turn up in news photos dressed up as terrorists? Somehow I doubt perpetuating "the myth of the fighter" would be first out of her mouth. But flyover-country Americans and their hunting gear? Now that's scary!

Where is the PETA for people being senselessly killed?

Where indeed, since PETA itself is well known to think the world would be just dandy with fewer (or no) humans in it. Do they really care if that's accomplished by gunfire or defenestration? Furthermore, isn't PETA on Ms. Heller's side of the aisle? I used to think it was a trait of the left that anyone not directly supporting their causes was automatically "the establishment", even a definitely un-mainstream hard left group like PETA. Now I wonder if it's just a trait of the kind of personality that decides an entire area of human endeavor represents their vision of evil and needs to be driven out of existence:

We need to attack guns and the all-too-powerful lobbyists and manufacturers the way cigarettes came under siege.

I started off writing that what we actually need is to undo the "siege" of the tobacco industry, but let's think outside the box for a moment--what if instead, we encourage these huge lawsuits against this and that industry. It will be a lean few decades, but eventually the only rich and powerful interests left will be ...trial lawyers. And the lefties always go after the rich, right?