We should point out that we know what it is like to have a loaded gun pointed to our head by a maniac threatening to pull the trigger. We once endured that gesture, alone, late at night, in a situation where we could not defend ourselves, nor run away. And it was an evil done to us which we shall never forget.

Mr. Kazmierczak, we have it reported, was quite inoffensive, a diligent graduate student at the University of Illinois in sociology, specializing in penology and criminology. He was, by the accounts, a nice person, engaging and reasonably sociable, active among his fellow students.

Ah, but you see, there was this "other layer" to his personality we have now reported, such that he recently broke up with his longtime girlfriend, there having been hints of verbal abuse in the process. He was off his medication. He had been to a mental health facility some eight years ago, where they count up the spoons; and one of the facilitators there said that part of the problem was that he would not accept that he was mentally ill. And, what is more, he had disturbing tattoos on his arms, depicting images from the movie "Saw" (which we didn't see and so won't make comment upon), though none of his tattoos used the word, "Ho"--at least so far as we know.

And, though we have made it a point the last twenty months, save for last spring's basketball tournament, not to listen to or watch tv at all, except for the snatches we can glean occasionally from the internet just to see what might be disturbingly stated by the grossly mentally disturbed who for the most part deliver the news these days, we now note a conversation we just saw thusly in which, as in so many others, the question was raised: "What can we do to insure campus security?"

Oh, well, we could do many things:

We could issue nametags to everyone who enters a college campus, making one subject to arrest immediately for not having the nametag in plain view. "Get on the ground, you creep, now--you nametagless swine."

We could make everyone subject to search without a warrant or probable cause, just as one is as a visitor to a prison, just as one is as a primary and secondary school student in many places these days, raising a whole generation of young citizens who no longer believe in the Fourth Amendment, as they themselves never were raised to believe it mattered much, since they were exempted from it, you see, by some Reaganite jerks who decided that the Constitution was all antiquated and the search for drugs was far more important than the quaint notion of civil rights to all. Just say No. "This rubber glove will not hurt you at all, little one. Now just bend on over."

We could abandon the First and the Fourth Amendments altogether, as this Administration has pretty much sought through its seven-year tenure to do anyway.

On the other hand, we could issue handguns to all entering students and to all professors and make it mandatory that they carry them at all times, unconcealed.

On the other hand, we could say no guitar cases on campus.

On the other hand, we could force everyone to attend college in the nude, any clothing making the person subject to arrest. That way, the x-ray machines which survey the nude body under our garments would be quite unnecessary and save the taxpayers a pile of money in the process.

On the other hand, we could profile everyone, as the profilers suggest, and anyone showing any "emotionally challenged" situation in their lives, why, make sure they get some professional help immediately, lest they become the next shooter, (who, for some odd reason, invariably already seems to have gotten that "help"). Thus, if you get a "C" when you expected an "A" and don't say, "awesome, dude"...; if the team loses and you're a big fan and can't say, "cool"...; if you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend and show a sad face over it...; if you are just a little iffy to begin with...; if you are overly preoccupied with studies and seem quiet...; if you have tattoos like some ho...; if you use the word "ho" offensively...; if you cuss, offensively...; if you drink...; if you use medication...; if you don't use medication...; if you don't go to Sunday school, offensively....; if you do go to Sunday school, offensively...; if you get A's when your suite mate gets C's and is insanely jealous of you...; if you are wearing purple hair...; if you are looking much too normal...

Well, we could go on with the plainly psychopathic, aberrational conduct exhibited on most college campuses and in most schools for time immemorial by, at one time or another, virtually every single student, now adults, ones who have obviously so medicated themselves, in broadcasting at least, that they no longer remember yesterday, let alone when they themselves were young, and so get on tv and make pronouncements from on high to screw up the minds of all the other medicatees who are their dedicated listeners and who support the sponsors and thus pay the bills to keep the Kliegs going.

But for time immemorial, we have not had school shootings; and, coincidentally, for time immemorial we have not had random searches and cops in schools; and for time immemorial we have not had 24-hour cable news showing all the horrors of daily existence, with someone with a half-wit degree from some broadcasting school, more concerned about their eye make-up and hairdo than obviously what they are reading dispassionately, providing you the while all the medicated goo of infotainment in full bloodied technicolor, as the students rush into the streets amid the police cordon with ambulances wailing out excitement, and all the drama and tear-fisted clinches attendant with it--over and over and over and over again.

There is, of course, a simple solution: Ban guns. Many large cities have, and with marked results. They do not seem ever to appear on the news in these cordoned off situations.

Make it a felony to own or possess a firearm. Make it a Federal law. It applies to any firearm, rifle, shotgun, pistol--yes, even antiques which do not have their firing pin removed or welded shut.

And if you, Mr. or Ms. Congressperson don't want to do that, you be a ho and a bitch. You respect the Second Amendment, and you, you ho-bitch, don't give a tinker's dam about the First. You're sick. You're insane. You are more concerned about baseball players getting shot up in the butt with growth hormones than you are the safety of the streets. You ho-bitch.

The utility of a gun these days is absolutely nil. Look to the Learned Hand formula of societal utility versus the inherent risk and danger of maintaining an attractive nuisance. For goodness sakes, they even banned steel merry-go-rounds from the playgrounds based on that very formula because kids were injured on them during non-school hours. And you, you are too stupid to ban a gun.

We have said it before, at risk of our own precious hide, and we shall say it again: damn the goddamned hunters. Damn their asses to hell. We don't care about your damned sport of killing animals for goddamned thrills. That is goddamned perverse, you ho-bitch. That tradition is perverse, and we don't care or give a damn even if some of our favorite politicians and leaders happen to be hunters. Damn them in that activity, too. So, too, any of our friends or former friends, should they be hunters. You be a bunch o' hos. You be people who care more about whether someone on the radio says, "She look like a ho-bitch to me with those tattoos," than selling guns to kids and the mentally disturbed.

There is no such thing, as we have seen, as "gun control". That is a cruel joke. Most of the shooters acquire their guns quite legally.

As we have said before, the Second Amendment does not provide the unfettered right to bear firearms; it is limited by the language: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."

The Supreme Court, as far back as 1939, agrees with us.

There has been no different Supreme Court pronouncement on the subject since 1939, and thus Miller remains the law. That is, there must be a reasonable relationship between the right to possession and ownership of a firearm and the maintenance of a well-regulated militia for there to exist in a particular context any right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. Otherwise, the Congress and the states are free to enact any law which infringes on ownership and possession of guns. It is true that state constitutions may be interpreted more liberally with respect to gun ownership and possession, but only if there is no conflict with existing Federal law constitutionally limiting ownership and possession of firearms. For the Federal law and the Federal Constitution are the Supreme Law of the land. If a Federal law bans guns, no state could allow guns under state law. And Miller also dealt with the issue of inherent police powers of the state and held that those powers do not occupy the field such that the Federal government would not have the right to limit possession and ownership of guns.

One critical point, of course, is that since 1939, when Miller was decided, major changes in our society have occurred with respect to standing armies. Since World War II, we have them, be they good or ill.

Thus, the need for a ready militia has ceased. You cannot have both a standing army and a militia. The latter would be superfluous and thus not necessary. The latter is purely in lieu of the former. So takes your choice, sips your poison. Either you have mandates akin to the original statutes in the colonies with regard to maintaining militias at the ready, running with it the risk of affording the stimulus to civil warfare (see, e.g., the February 15, 1938 editorial page containing the Fayetteville Observer's exhortation by General Beauregard of 75 years earlier, urging the farmers of the countryside of North Carolina to take to arms utilizing their pikes and shovels, if necessary, to resist and defend themselves, their families and property, against the "enemy", i.e. the Federal government), or you have the standing army we have, and thus give up your rights to have militias of necessity, to avoid the prospect of civil wars and would-be civil war hotheads run up the pole by some ho with a vengeance, such that the testosterone levels react unduly in accord with the pole.

The Supreme Court this term has a case finally before it on guns and the Second Amendment, and we applaud the Court for taking it on (even if last spring we regarded a few of them as hos). The issue squarely is whether an absolute ban on handguns in the District of Columbia violates the Second Amendment. Of course, following the principle of stare decisis and the Miller injunction, the Court should rule on the basis of whether the ban restricts the right to maintain a well-regulated militia, or, put another way, whether gun ownership of any sort bears a reasonable relationship to such a militia's formation and maintenance. The answer, we believe, is obvious: Just say No. And then we need not say Ho.

If not, then get ready for strip searches on college campuses and the complete disruption of society generally, already nearly a done deal, because of a few gun-nuts with a powerful lobby who bring to their cause Moses uttering enchanting death-head phrases (in our old hometown, no less) such as, "From my cold dead hand..." Candidly, Mr. Heston, you probably deserve no less for that kind of childish expression of emotion, worthy of a teenager in heat, not a grown man--but, nevertheless, it is your perfect right under the Constitution, just as it is ours to call you a bitch-ho for saying it. So, from your cold dead hand, perhaps, we shall wrench your cold, dead metallic phallic symbol, to make up for your cold, dead hand.

Are you offended?

We are, but by the blood of college students on the classroom floor, and of those in the public schools who will in consequence never get to become college students; and at the ultimate behest of lunatics, both in Congress and in the populace generally, gun-toting maniacs and hunters, and to whom tv idiots respond in obeisance, being more concerned the while about their eye makeup, their hair placement, their use of appropriate words, and nonchalant inhuman lack of show of emotion, while desperately disparaging two-thirds of their viewers and the population generally by warning about profiles into which fit the bulk of the population, and in the face of obvious solutions which shan't dare be uttered to clutter the airwaves; for, after all, that might offend a viewer or two among the lunatic fringe who most tenaciously cling to the tv security blanket for advice, thinking these idiots "experts", and lose the tv people a sponsor or two, and, then, no more free hair-dos and free eye makeup from the corporate benefactor who provides the free ride for the little witchcraft scene you purvey daily to the rest of us who still have either the stomach or the mindless attunement to watch it.

Our profile of the real shooter, the one most obvious, who never takes the blame: Klieg-lighted eyes, lots of big hair, no emotion, reads lines zombified like a little prince or princess browsing in the shop window for the next day's fashion-plate imagery for themselves, works for 24-cable news and needs relief from boredom almost every minute of every day. "Oh, look, oh my goodness, another shooting in a school. Oh, how horrible. What can we do? Call the profiler, again, and the professional psychologists, the usual ones we like, who say nothing controversial and make us feel secure and warm. How many victims? Only three. Huh. Well, get the interviews of the survivors. Must have been another loner nut type. Probably mentally ill. We really should lock them all up, you know. Oh dear, ten seconds? How do I look? Nose hair?"

Of course, we could put all of society on 24-hour lockdown. That'd fix them.

We instead simply suggest that you say it with us, stand up and shout it out, just say it right out loud: Goddamned those guns; goddamned those bastards to hell who use them; goddamned those bitch-ho guns.

There now, neighbor, you feel better already, don't you?

Sportsmen Refuse To Make Any Concession to Cops

Yesterday Tim Pridgen wrote in the Charlotte News, of the Legislature:

What makes that curious is that the bill had nothing to do with sportsmen, save occasional pistol clubs. And it proposed to deprive none of them of the privilege of owning any kind of gun.

Rifles and shotguns, the types most used by sportsmen, would not have been touched. Owners of pistols would have been put to the slight trouble of registering the gun and getting a license for it. That would have been the sum of it. And in return for the slight trouble to a few sportsmen the police would have got a powerful weapon for keeping pistols out of the hands of irresponsible and often murderous Negroes and whites. Durham County already has a local law, passed by the Legislature, requiring such registration and the police chief there has emphatically testified that it is very useful in the control of crime.

But the sportsmen's lobby would have none of that--would not make any concession, though the murder rate in Mecklenburg and North Carolina is obviously something which concerns the safety of sportsmen and their loved ones quite as much as the rest of us.

It is not an endearing attitude, to say the least. And it may well prove to be a very badly advised one from the sportsmen's own viewpoint. For if the present conditions are left to fester long enough, they may eventuate in some drastic action or banning of firearms such as New York has already taken--the last thing the sportsmen want.