Rhetorical Address to Gun-loving Bunker Hunkerers

So it's happened again.

But it can, after all, be reliably predicted.

Soon, once again, a psychopath, armed to the teeth, will kill a large number of people, trending to be a larger number each time.

Periodically in the news cycle, becoming an accepted part of the background of our interconnected lives, accepted reluctantly, because of the knowledge that it happens, the thing happens.

With each new public atrocity, we trudge through the various stages, the call for self-examination, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the sackcloth and ashes.

The timid, quasi-anti gun editorials tentatively submitted to public discourse, then resoundingly smacked down by the vigorous, robustly pro-gun Right.

Then the coda-- the editorial conclusion: we throw up our hands in defeat. Nobody challenges the NRA.

And when you hear the voices on talk radio, read the inflamed commentary on the Internet, a number of implied beliefs emerge from the gestalt of the pro-gun side.

Most curious among these is the implication-- sometimes the open assertion --that the right to own and shoot guns is also the right to armed revolt against... the U.S. Government. Obama. The Feds.

This self-aggrandizing fantasy is, you bet, a wishful dream of power by those who actually feel impotent to halt changes they don't like.

It expresses itself , as we know, in the fetishizing of guns, so beautifully made, so successful at what they do.

Guns which can throw fatal force a superhuman distance, to deadly effect, with the God-like power to smite and strike down...

But you know what, you guys?

No matter what kind of arsenal you've managed to put together in your own private Libertarian Fort Survivalist --there's no way to avoid this, any way you look at it-- you're outgunned.

This seems so obvious. I mean, look, what if you've even got a few tanks squirreled away, armor-piercing rounds, heat-seeking missiles, you name it--

The government has more cool weaponry than you do.

It can defeat nations. It can certainly defeat you.

Like the late, lamented Branch Davidians, you will be overwhelmed. That is the way it is.

So what is really the point?

Does the fantasy include dying heroically? Like Davy Crockett, at the Alamo?

Leave civil war to the re-enactors.

It's just as Goya said-- the Sleep of Reason sure does produce Monsters.