WHY AMERICA LOVES GUNS, AND IS WILLING TO DIE FOR THEM

I'm very glad that President Obama stepped up and did what he said he would do in the wake of the Newtown, CT. school massacre. Should everything he proposes get put in place, the measures will indeed make some difference in making it a little harder to kill large numbers of innocent Americans in public places, and will add a few more nets to try to prevent the mentally-ill from obtaining firearms while trying to get them some effective help. It's the right thing to do, always was the right thing to do.

But it's a band-aid on a fatal wound. Because of who we are, our cultural identity, and the way the world has changed in the last 30 years, we will remain a violent nation, ironically and pathetically kept in fear and paranoia by the very Constitution that was designed to be a guarantor of freedom and safety.

I am so very weary, bone-tired, beyond frustrated to hear the disgusting brays of outrage over Obama's gun-control plan from the NRA and their shoot-'em-up pals. I could literally throw up reading how gun sales soared all over the nation after a bunch of six-year-olds were murdered. There's nothing in me at all that can relate to this sickness. But I can step back and understand why we are the way we are, beginning with the beginning. "A well-regulated militia" and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" -- there's your Second Amendment. I would like to remind everyone that this was ratified on

DECEMBER 15, 1791.

Think about that for a moment. Think about everything in our daily lives as Americans that is different than how things were as this country's laws were being formed. Answer: EVERYTHING. Absolutely EVERYTHING is different now. Everything about war and how it would be waged on our land, how we protect our families and property, how we eat, everything. The mindset of the colonials in setting up a new land free from tyranny was to keep the individual free and strong, and to allow no government, even our own, to even think of steamrolling us. The right to own handheld killing machines would stop the bad guys from just taking over, right?

But look what actually happened. The guns we originally armed ourselves with against some 18th-Century king? We use them to kill ourselves, by the thousands each and every year, by accident or intent. That's the truth. So why is this acceptable to millions and millions of citizens?

Think more about what guns are. Yes, they are made of metal and wood and shoot out fast-moving projectiles. But what they represent is power. The ultimate in power, God-like, even: the ability to take away another's life with the simple squeeze of a trigger. What is bigger than that? Nothing. Now think about the cultural guiding principals we hold so dearly in America, that anyone can make it to the top with enough hard work, that the brass ring is yours to grab, that you can have it all here, that you can raise your station in a generation. We are taught this from birth, and guess what? There are plenty of American success stories, dreams fulfilled that probably could not have happened anywhere else.

But in this same culture, when all emphasis is placed on winning, we by default create a mighty nation of losers. We all are tantalized from birth by images of the wealthy and successful and told over and over and over, if only you are clever and persistent and nose-to-the-grindstone, you can have this, too, and should want to have it. But of course this is untrue. Most people will lead pretty average lives -- as they really are supposed to, and which is not shameful -- and some will never get over the feeling that they were somehow denied or cheated from having the big American Dream. They will overburden themselves with debt buying the goodies they believe they should have but can't pay for, fill themselves with junk food because it's cheap and tastes good despite making them ill. They will numb themselves regularly with alcohol or pain pills and call it "partying." They will drown their unsatisfying realities in garbage reality TV or movies that show brains being splattered in 3D, or multi-player videogame worlds where "winning" equals slaughtering your realistic-looking digital foes.

If you feel denied, if you feel like someone is out to take away the little that you have already, that the world is a cruel and random place where no one should be trusted, that you tried and tried your best but never kept up with the Joneses, if everything you were told you suspect might be a lie...

Maybe you buy a gun. You buy a gun, and in that instant, you are the most-powerful person on Earth. No matter what you don't have and never will have, by god, you've got the option to kill someone if you want to. You win.

When you build a society where the good intent of giving people freedom and choice results in a divided, cold-hearted nation of a few haves and a whole lot of have-nots, and then provide them with the opportunity to buy and use weapons that give them the illusion of power and control, by god, people are gonna love those guns. They are going to need and love them even more than they love their own families, the collective cultural hole inside is that big and empty to fill.

It doesn't matter that it's not 1791 anymore, and no one at all actually needs to own a gun. It doesn't matter that all the statistics and police and hospital records tell you in plain numbers that American gun owners in 2013 aren't saving themselves from terrorists or invaders or gangs -- they are shooting their wives, children, co-workers, strangers, and themselves in horrifying numbers every single day. It doesn't matter that going to school or the movies or the mall is now something that you have to wonder if you will survive. It doesn't matter at all.

We are American drunkards, drowning in perceived failure and high on the false, futile idea of being able to believe that a gun is the answer to everything that is wrong, shaking our heads at the TV showing the photos of the dead, crying a tear while saying, "Shit happens."

Nothing will change.