532 Yes We Have No Bananas

532 Yes We Have No Bananas

Are there more nut cases with weapons around and using them these days, or does it just seem so?  

Binghamton, New York.  Pittsburgh, Honolulu, Carthage, NC, Santa Clara, Oakland,  Rural Alabama.  About 40 people cut down by assassins within 30 days in March and (so far) in April of this year.  

Are they all gun happy meth heads and drunks determined to stamp out their personal demons by shooting up anyonehandy?  Or is it something more?  

Is it the depression that we're still calling a recession, or are they just nuts?  

There's no clear answer.  But there is a connecting thread:  guns kill people.

The National Rifle Association, trade group for the gunsels  and their manufacturing suppliers, have been telling us for years that "guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Right.  And given a sword or a Garrot, or a baseball bat, people would continue to kill people, even without their AK-47s and Uzis.  But not by remote control.  You can't kill someone at 50 feet with a noose or a carving knife or a Louisville Slugger.  But you can with a 17 round Glock  Model 34 or a Sig Sauer SP 2022 or even better with an R-4 Assault Rifle.

The pen may be mightier than the sword.  But it's not mightier than the Uzi.

These gunmen are advancing a mentality that's more common to the third world than it is here:  Life Is Cheap.

They make fun of your English?  Mow 'em down.

They like to your ex-wife at the nursing home where she works?  Mow 'em down.

They're cops just doing their jobs?  Mow 'em down.

We're getting to be a banana republic -- and we don't even have the banana crop to show for it.

You worried about the battling drug lords on the Mexican border?  You can cancel the Mexican vacation.  But you can't cancel the view of life on the border, right now, and you can't escape it even in your placid suburb.

We might as well be in Guatemala or Romania these days. 

Better get out there and cop one of those "Lady Smith" .38s.  Maybe get the laser site to go with it.

Shrapnel:

--Fellow Yankee fans, an alert.  You will never find a richer view of the new stadium than from Steve Lanzone.  Here's a Link.

--Three giants of classical music ambled by here in Tantamount, PA. the other day.  Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and Emanuel Ax played together on a local stage.  They are the new Traveling Wilburys, only funnier -- and they do it without a single pair of sunglasses.

--North Korea says it has launched a satellite that's sending back signals to earth, but NORAD says it didn't happen.  But maybe it did.  Wait and see if you get a pitch in Korean and English for subscriptions at a monthly fee from Radio Pyongyang.  

I'm Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2009