Paranoia is America’s national religion: Wing-nuts, gun culture & the disturbing cost of living in..

[marmar]

from Salon:


Paranoia is America’s national religion: Wing-nuts, gun culture & the disturbing cost of living in constant fear
GARY LEGUM


For the second time in two months, I’m trying to write a column in the middle of an ongoing mass shooting on the West Coast. And once again I find myself filled with that mix of loathing, despair, and angry sarcasm that I haven’t felt since…oh, last Friday, when Robert Dear shot up that Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

This can’t be healthy, for anyone.

Ironically, I had planned on writing about the news that Black Friday saw a record number of background checks performed for gun purchases. People love to give each other guns for Christmas, because nothing says “spirit of the season” like a Glock with a 15-round magazine. If Jesus had been strapped, those Romans probably never would have messed with him. Talk about not defending yourself against government tyranny! Apparently God gave everyone the natural right to self-defense except His only son.

So the FBI’s instant background check system performed 185,345 checks last Friday, about two every second, even while the bodies were falling in Colorado Springs. And that’s just one day of the silly shopping season, which comes in a year that has seen a steady increase in gun sales. Part of this boom (no pun intended) surely comes from Second Amendment enthusiasts who are paranoid that Obama is going to come steal their guns any minute, as they have promised he is about to do for seven years. But one wonders how much of it is driven by people who have not had more than a passing interest in guns before, who now find themselves in a country full of armed lunatics. A country where a quick trip to the grocery store or a Friday-night movie could be interrupted by an angry man with a grudge and a couple of semi-automatics with high-capacity magazines.

In short, how much of this surge in gun sales comes from people who are not rabid Wayne LaPierre groupies, but see a society falling victim to his poisonous rhetoric and think they may as well buy a gun, just in case? Can’t say I blame them. Even if your chances of falling victim to gun violence are still very low, the breathless media coverage of each mass shooting and the polls on what your fellow Americans want with regard to gun control laws must make arming yourself feel like a rational response. ...................(more)

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/03/paranoia_is_americas_national_religion_wing_nuts_gun_culture_the_disturbing_cost_of_living_in_constant_fear/

[Indydem]

1. Including paranoia of being shot.

You are not going to die in a mass shooting.

The odds are better that you will win the lottery.

But continue to make it seem as if everyone is at risk, and confirm your paranoia.