Shot Through the Heart by American Hypocrisy

America is a mere teenager among western nations, and like a teen, it can't decide what it really wants to be when it grows up. Right now, adolescent America sees itself as strong and "super" and cannot possibly conceive of its own mortality. Ask any mother of any teen, and she will tell you what a dangerous time that is in a child's life.

And if Republicans are perceived as the Daddies of this teenage America, and Democrats are perceived as the Mommies, then it is no wonder we have again found one of their children in the campus bell tower with a high-powered rifle. No child can be raised with such conflicting social messages as exist in America today and then be expected to stare down the extremes of puberty with sanity intact.

The dysfunction of the family America is becoming legend around the globe. Even the best of families harbor dysfunction to some degree. But when Daddy became a holy roller, it threw the family into real turmoil. With the intimacy gone from the marriage, Daddy harangues all with Christian edicts. The secular gun money keeps talkin', and the righteous bullcrap keeps walkin'. Mommy stands on the sidelines and wrings her hands.

Daddy as a wing-nut is now a more fearful hypocrite than ever, and Mommy has always been too afraid to cross him about all the guns he keeps in the house. But what about the children? she whines. Has it always been so impossible for Mommy to simply ask Daddy the question: You want to run a Christian household? Well then, what is so Christian about filling our home with automatic weapons?

Were she to take a stand on the righteous answer to that question, hands on squared hips, what would result? Would support for her view flood from the community of the honest? Or would Daddy's gun club slander her around town, paint her a whore, and get away with it, again?

In American family history, the latter seems the rule, and Mommy knows it. Mommy is told to mind her own business, go cook something. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And Mommy witnessed Mitt Romney on CNN hemming and hawing and stammering around trying to prove he can wield a rifle when it's clearly doubtful he can. How telling.

Anyone wishing to be the President of the United States has to keep the Christian Daddies, the gun-totin' Daddies, and the gun-totin' Christian Daddies happy. He or she has to pretend to be one of the good old Neanderthal boys. No presidential hopeful can risk being perceived as the party poop parent that will put a stop to the cowboys and Indians fantasy occurring in the backyard. Even if someone is getting hurt.

America, like the teen whose pubescent opinions frequently conflict and are based on childish whims, supports in reality the morphology of zero tolerance in school into conceal carry at home. A teen might stay mad at grandma for pointing out that he can't have his cake and eat it, too. But continued attempts to prove her wrong just go against the laws of physics.

Americans will tolerate a bratty six-year-old being dragged out of kindergarten in handcuffs, and in the same breath tolerate a gun being placed within his reach. Mommy and Daddy need to see a therapist, fast. They need a refresher course on common sense and to be told to stop behaving like the teen they propose to parent.

It's true, the Second Amendment does grant Americans the "right to bear arms." But the Constitution and Bill of Rights also grant Americans the right to wear powdered wigs and tell British officers they can't spend the night. America no longer has a need for armed colonials to act as a defensive citizen army just because there is no one else for the job. In 21st century America a massive amount of tax dollars are forked-over regularly to pay for military protections.

When the Second Amendment was conceived by family America's ancestors, there were no 19-round 9mm semi-automatic handguns. There were no armor-piercing bullets. People just mostly shot at their dinner--with a muzzle-loader. Today, Americans get their protein wrapped in cellophane from the Pick n' Save and take it back to suburbia, not to a cabin on the frontier.

Benjamin Franklin could never conceive of an entertainment industry purposed to make billions peddling violence to America. Perhaps if the forefathers returned to witness the current devolution of social standards and the heightening of hypocrisy surrounding the issue of violence, they would be the first in line to either remove the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights or demand an upgrade.

Yesterday, Mommies and Daddies stood silently together on the chamber floor of the United States House of Representatives and were actually, temporarily, united in sharing a moment of joint grief over another senseless loss of young lives on the campus of Virginia Tech. But at some point, sadness will fall away and be replaced by acceptance. Acceptance--the real enemy.

So, until America's Mommies and Daddies can permanently unite in practicing good parenthood skills and agree it's way past time for the sake of the family to lock the gun cabinet and throw away the key, guns will continue not killing anyone. But people using guns will keep on killing.

Just ask the mommies and daddies of the students of Virginia Tech.