This morning on This Week with George Stephanopolous the "In Memoriam" segment contained the names of the Christmas shoppers killed in Omaha, and that made my mind beginning turning on the issue of guns and the right to bear arms.

On one of the rock n' roll forums I frequent the conversation often goes outside the boundaries of music into current events. It was after the Virginia Tech shooting, I think, that a British contributor said, "You could just take up the hand guns. Or would that interfere with all that freedom bollocks?"

I found his pithy comment thought-provoking. Why do we feel like we aren't free unless we have the option to shoot masses of strangers? Freedom to vote, freedom of religion, freedom to travel, freedom to start a business -- I'm straitjacketed! Oh, and the freedom to own an assault rifle and execute nine people at a Omaha mall on a whim? Now I feel free!

Another poster on DemocraticUnderground.com had a good take on this as well, I thought: we have the freedom to bear arms. Now because of that freedom, a high-tech police state is being created so that we can be safe, as well. And it's true, think about it. Oklahoma City was the beginning, and the concern with security, the installation of metal detectors in public buildings, began there. The Olympic Park bombing here in Atlanta, where you had to be patted down to enter a public area, was another milestone. Then there was a rash of school shootings in the late `90's that peaked with Columbine -- Columbine, which already had security cameras, but then we knew cameras weren't enough. Then of course, the biggest, September 11, 2001. Now every car has a GPS device so that your movements can be tracked. Your cell phone has GPS, also. (You have to wait three months to get international dialing capability on your cell phone, and I'm pretty sure that's Homeland Defense-oriented.) Wiretapping without a warrant requested by the president from the party who talks the most about "small government." Even the Internet was an invention of the Department of Defense, and we all blab our thoughts here and, I'm fairly certain, everything is stored for future reference somewhere. As I've mentioned before TiVO has a record of what TV shows you've watched. "It looks like he was watching a lot of stuff on terrorism on TLC right before that pipe bomb went off in the courtyard of his office building...better look into him."

All to prevent things like the Omaha mall shooting last week, and yet it still happened, and will happen again, and again.

"You moron!," you exclaim. "Don't you know if we take away guns only the criminals will have guns?" You're right, I'm forgetting about the brave militia of Omaha shoppers who pulled their pistols from purse and pocket, forging a living testament to the security private ownership brings about. Nah, of course despite being in a Red State where hunting is likely a popular sport, only the kook had a gun in spite of it all.

People love to point to the Constitution and it's amendments as a defense of the current state of things, but I think we may have to be honest with ourselves that the founding fathers were writing in a different time, and may have been...overly-optimistic about human nature. Have you met the average person? I know I hardly trust them to be able to steer a car, let along hold a machine that dispenses a dozen bullets in under 20 seconds. And, of course, such guns didn't exist in George Washington's time. If you're going to say that the right to keep guns ensures you can't be the victim of a tyrannical government, you may as well go fluff your powdered wig. If it comes down to the FBI, CIA, ATF, National Guard, local police and all their armory against you and your .38 revolver, well...you can even throw in your nephew with his hunting rifle and still all bets are off.

The fact is times have simply changed from when that was written. Let's think about if this kid in Omaha had tried this in 1750. First, he would have lived on a family farm where his nearest neighbor was 10 miles away. He would have been too busy with farm work to think up such nonsense, as it would occupy his entire day and much of his evening. Next, there would probably be only a few rifles, maybe just one, around, and everyone would notice if it was missing. His immediate relations would've been around all the time watching his moods, and he might've been less likely to shoot them. Even if he did, at least the massacre would've been contained because getting to a public location like the mall would've taken half a day on foot or on horse. And of course there was no mall to go to, no place where hundreds of strangers, who he had no personal attachment to, were walking around like ducks in a shooting gallery.

So unfortunately it's just too easy to do something like this, and too hard to stop it, and the current controls aren't working yet a large segment of the public is vociferous about not changing them.

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