Don't Blame Politics, Blame Easy Access to Handguns

Richard Cohen: We can't get rid of the Second Amendment, but we can fix it
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 11, 2011 1:55 PM CST
Don't Blame Politics, Blame Easy Access to Handguns
A Glock 9 mm pistol: Too easy to get?   (AP Photo/Don Petersen, File)

Everyone's casting about for blame in the Arizona shooting, but Richard Cohen thinks this one's easy: It's not Sarah Palin or other right-wing commentators at fault, but the "American gun culture." In what universe does it make sense to allow a clearly unbalanced young man to buy a Glock "almost on the spot," he wonders in the Washington Post. "If he is crazy, then so are we."

The modern political culture may or may not have played a role in his motivation. "But rather than going on a national guilt trip, we should turn our attention to the one element in this tragedy that can be controlled: easy access to guns," writes Cohen. "Little in life is easy or open-and-shut. There is probably no getting rid of all guns, there is no denying their appeal, and there is no use ignoring the Second Amendment. But amendments can be repealed and then reworded (long guns only?) and somehow made to conform to the 21st century." (More Jared Lee Loughner stories.)

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