Since I've started doing a podcast, where you can hear my voice and that of my guests and the audio I collect of my world, I've wondered exactly what to do with the blog. With recent events, I've realized that whereas with the podcast I'm having apolitical discussions with people with creative/show business aspirations, this is a good place to comment on real world things. So in other words, if you're a conservative who likes my podcast but doesn't want to be exposed to my just-left-of-center world views, then don't read this.

Aww, who am I kidding? Nobody of any political stripe is reading this, anyway!

Only minutes earlier I had heard that RottenTomatoes.com had closed the comment section on the movie The Dark Knight Rises because readers were writing death threats to reviewers who gave the movie a low score. Then I turned on a local morning show and heard the news that several people had been shot and killed during a midnight screening at an Aurora, Colorado theater. (The two events surrounding the movie don't seem to be related.)

That afternoon, I was listening to conservative talk show host Bill Carroll from KFI-AM in Los Angeles. Carroll was talking about the shootings, saying, "Let's not politicize this. Let's let the families mourn."

Then I got on Facebook and an Internet friend of mine, who is unfortunately a conservative despite being apparently bright otherwise, was echoing the "let's not politicize this" meme. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et al., all used the "let's not politicize this" line.

Were they calling on their conservative peers not to politicize this? Hmm...is there any way conservatives could take this event as an example of why we need less gun control? Is there any way the events in Aurora could be used as Exhibit A in why we should have more guns on the street, shorter waiting periods, less testing? No. So it's doubtful the "let's not politicize this" phrase was aimed at their conservative brethren.

No, "Let's not politicize this; let's let the families grieve," was aimed at Democrats. George Bush, Jr. used this same phrase immediately after the Virginia Tech shootings. That wasn't the time to discuss gun control laws, it was time to let the families grieve. And a couple of weeks later the story was out of the news, out of most people's minds who were not directly affected, and the gun control issue was swept under the rug yet again, just as the conservatives and National Rifle Association lobby wanted it.

"Let's not politicize this; let's let the families grieve" is nothing but a tactic to quickly frame the situation as, "Any Democrat who brings up gun control right now is being insensitive to the aggrieved." It's a way to shut us up, because to bring up gun control at a time like this is to initiate a debate conservatives can't win! Of COURSE they don't want to discuss gun control now! This is yet another flagrant example of how wrong their firearms philosophy is! The Aurora shooter got his guns legally at retail gun shops. He stockpiled 6,000 rounds of ammo online, all legal. By all measures he was just another American exercising his right to bear arms, only he wasn't sane.

"You think he couldn't have gotten those guns illegally, Mr. Liberal?," the pro firearms-for-everybody guy says. Maybe he could've gotten them illegally, but there wouldn't be so many illegal handgun purchases if there weren't so many legal ones. The Smith & Wesson truck doesn't get hijacked to put illegal guns in nutjobs and criminals hands, they start off as legal sales. Only later are the guns sold under the table, serial numbers removed, etc.

And what about the pro firearms-for-everybody sets' argument that more guns on the street means a more well-defended citizenry? Well, where was the would-be Charles Bronson who dropped this guy in Aurora in two shots before he could do any real harm? Maybe the concealed carry laws didn't extend to the theater, but here in Atlanta, a Dairy Queen was robbed during the week at lunch time, and it's less than half a mile from an indoor shooting range where the parking lot is always full. Weren't any handy shots having a Blizzard for lunch that afternoon?

It's not Democrats being insensitive to grieving families when they bring up gun control after a moment like Aurora. The insensitive ones are those who want even more lax laws than the ones that let this happen, which will result in more grieving families down the road.

Let's politicize this.