Guns at Home

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Rachel Maddow visited Pittsburgh during last week's National Rifle Association convention.  She interviewed Ricky Burgess, City councilman from Homewood, one of Pittsburgh's mostly African American neighborhoods.  In this segment and another, he described in personal terms the impact of easily available guns on his life and the lives and life of his neighborhood.  Anything about Pittsburgh hits home to me, but this truly tragic situation affects everywhere in America, especially cities.  What is most disturbing to me--and to Burgess, I suspect--is that due to the NRA's monomanical efforts, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that forbids individual cities from passing their own gun control laws, to govern their own circumstances.  As Burgess points out, nobody is shooting rabbits or deer in Homewood.  They are shooting each other.  This is a very powerful video piece, as is the second segment at The Maddow Blog.

Maddow revealed one reason the NRA opposes any limitations on guns, ammunition, etc. at all--several of their board members are in the business of selling these items.  It's really all about money, not second amendment rights.  All of this forces my attention on what it is too depressing to see most of the time--this culture has lost all semblance of sanity on this issue.  The gun is the foremost symbol of power and even sexuality in this society--just walk down the aisles of a video store and look at the covers.