Costas & truly innovative gun violence solutions

(912 words)

I was disappointed yesterday after Bob Costas said talking for 90 seconds about gun violence during an NFL halftime show was “a mistake.”

Actually, talking so much about football violence in a country where there’s so much gun and domestic violence is the real mistake. 

I’ll die happy if I can go the rest of my life without hearing some football announcer drone on about another torn ACL.

The problem is my life could end prematurely any minute because someone with a gun and a grudge is having a bad day.

I’ve always liked Costas, even as he’s undergone so much youth-preserving plastic surgery he’s starting to appear less like a thoughtful sportscaster and more like one of those kids who used to stand on the corner and shout things like, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

By referencing this Jayson Whitlock column about Jovan Belcher’s horrific murder -suicide, Costas indicated he was fed up that gun violence is such a daily staple in a nation that dares call itself civilized.

I’m fed up it’s taken him so long to become fed up.

Gun enthusiasts consider talking about gun violence so soon after gun violence an etiquette breach only slightly less proper than the gun violence itself. This is a very clever tactic because our gun tragedies happen with such overlapping frequency it ensures we’ll never have an opportunity to discuss it. So we never do.

We should be talking about nothing else.

Costas ended by citing Whitlock’s final line, “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

In your dreams, boys.

Mine, too.

In fact, in my dreams I’d like to wake up one morning and read that overnight Barack and Michelle had piloted a black Stealth helicopter over every home in America and used a giant magnet to suck all the guns and probably a bunch of toasters up the chimney for federal confiscation.

And that they were going to reconstitute the metal for use in rural windmills and playground swing sets in underprivileged Hispanic neighborhoods.

And to think I used to dream about things like Pamela Anderson.

Over the past year I’ve become America’s foremost writer offering innovative solutions to our kill crazy gun crisis (God help us).

Here’s a rundown of my ideas and how they would have played out with Perkins and Belcher:

• The Barney Fife Amendment -- Everyone is allowed to carry a loaded gun everywhere, all the time. But you only get one bullet. Use or lose your bullet and in addition to existing laws, you have to appear before a judge to explain what happened to your bullet before you get another bullet.

This would have likely saved the life of Kasandra Perkins. With one bullet Belcher might have winged her or missed entirely. Either way, Belcher would have felt instant remorse and called 911. We know this because after he shot her nine times in front of her distraught mother the mother told police she saw him bend down, kiss her on the forehead and say, “I’m so sorry.”

And their daughter would not have been orphaned because Belcher wouldn’t have had the additional bullet he put through his brain in front of his coach and general manager.

So there’s a lot to be said for the Barney Fife Amendment.

• Enforce 2nd Amendment -- I contend most of the he-men rednecks I know would give up their guns if it meant monthly drilling, safety and calisthenics down at the high school football field when they’re used to being home nursing their Saturday hangovers. Why the part of “well-regulated militia” is never mentioned in discussions about the 2nd Amendment is incomprehensible to me.

There’s absolutely nothing well-regulated or militia-like about the majority of today’s handgun owners. Enforcing the exact wording of the 2nd Amendment would entirely change our gun culture. It would ennoble it to the original intention of our Founding Fathers and we’d all sleep better knowing those crafty Canadians would be more wary about invading us knowing our militias are so well-regulated.

Belcher wouldn’t have had a gun or felt much of a need for one, so Perkins survives this, too.

• “IN CASE OF SPREE KILLERS, BREAK GLASS” -- The armed hombres all say if they’d been in the Colorado theatre when James Holmes had started firing they’d have cooly risen from their seats and put the gunman down, a hypothetical that always causes veteran police officers to crack up. But let’s assume it were true.

Let’s have a rack of guns right beside the fire alarms and, obviously, everyone who wants to can carry. Having loaded guns everywhere might reduce spree killer body counts, but I contend random rage killings and deaths from what I call oops bullets would skyrocket.

Under this scenario, Perkins is a goner, but so is Belcher most likely, so it’s a bit of a wash.

There. That’s a host of innovative solutions to our gun crisis you won’t hear on any of the talk shows. They range the gamut from no one gets guns to everyone is packing.

I’m going to try and spend the rest of the day coming up with some more because I believe it’s a moral imperative we all propose ideas to break the dreadful deadlock about what to do about so many senseless gun deaths.

If we don’t, it’s a lock more innocents will wind up dead.

Related . . .

• Safety lessons from spree killers

• (See above)

Profound, timely, solutions to spree killers

Note: I finished this at 8:30 a.m. and didn’t hear the news out of NYC until noon. How sadly prophetic.

It’s been, I guess, a week or so since another spree killer made the national news. Or maybe not.

It’s been 20 minutes since I last checked the headlines. A lot can happen in 20 minutes.

What I can guarantee hasn’t happened is that anyone has proposed a fresh solution to our national insanity. This summer’s relentless violence has produced a collective sort of shrug.

It’s like we as a nation have decided there’s an acceptable body count that goes along with bestowing even mentally disabled or disgruntled white men the absolute right to possess a few semi-automatic AR-15s with 100-round ammo drums capable of killing 140 people in 140 seconds.

In fact, that’s short-changing the weapon. I read that bullets from the AR-15 -- it’s the kind the Aurora killer James Holmes used -- can be counted on to go through not one but two people at a time.

So it’s theoretically possible an AR-15 bullet could hit the Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad -- yea! -- travel through his body and lethally ventilate Nelson Mandela -- boo!

The scenario reminds me of a pivotal scene from Clint Eastwood’s great 1992 Western, “Unforgiven.”

A naive young assassin nervously gloats about gunning down an unarmed man who’s pants down and seated on the outhouse crapper.

“Well, I guess he had it coming,” the kid says.

“We all have it coming, kid,” wise old Clint says.

Sure we do. We all go to the movies, the churches, the taverns, the gyms, schools, work and the shopping malls -- all sites of recent spree killings.

That anyone in these dangerous times should feel safe while seated on the toilet seems to me a charming notion. Or should I say a Charmin notion!

I believe I stand alone in trying to change the dynamics of this peculiar national tragedy. It was I who offered the Barney Fife Amendment, which would allow anyone, anywhere, to carry a loaded gun.

One condition: you get just one bullet. Use or lose your bullet and in addition to any existing laws you have to go before a judge to explain what happened to your bullet before you get another bullet.

This got zero traction, I’m sorry to say, as did my idea of smart bullet innovation. I suggested the government offer incentives to develop smart bullets that would decide in mid-air if the intended targets deserve killing and then select a more deserving victim.

This is all about preserving innocent collateral damage. The beauty of smart bullets is that in many cases the bullets will reverse and strike the person who fired it, saving police departments a fortune.

Then after the Aurora killings I offered the idea that we could reduce gun violence by having the NRA administer a truly well-regulated militia, the belief being there are more regulations involving the needle artists responsible for tattooing our hillbillies than there are for guns.

This, too, landed with a thud. None of my gun-owning friends said they wanted to sweat out their Saturday hangovers doing calisthenics at the local high school rec fields.

That’s where we are in the gun debate. Every sensible argument offered by people who think there are too many guns, has been gunned down by the people with, duh, all the guns.

The only solution to our near weekly sensational spree killings, they say, are more guns in more places. They think if only there’d been armed hombres like them in the theater, they would have cooly risen amidst the hail of bullets and taken down the killer with one shot.

I think they’ve seen too many movies.

But because I believe the blood-drenched status quo is wholly unacceptable, I at last surrender to their logic.

Let’s try installing racks of loaded guns right next to the fire extinguishers. Signs on the glass can read, “IN CASE OF SPREE KILLER BREAK GLASS.”

There, of course, may be unintended consequences. Angry drunks may break the glass to settle parking space disputes, spouses may escalate infidelity arguments with handy firearms, and there are bound to be casualties involving ticket takers, young mothers or 12-year-old kids who picked the wrong day to see the Batman movie.

Oh, well. Let’s just figure they’ll all have it coming.

By doing continuing to do absolutely nothing, I’m convinced we all do.