Another admission of conservative impotence
Put us in charge, say Republicans. We pledge to do nothing.
“The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.”
— House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked by Fox News’s Sean Hannity about demands for more gun laws or more legislation in the wake of mass shootings
Alexandra Petri translates:
The problem is the human heart. Gun violence is an unchangeable, immutable fact of the human condition. That is why it is localized so strongly to this country and this time period. This is not a problem with a solution. It is the price you pay for being human. This is not unique to the United States, although you see it only here. Maybe it’s something to do with the water. Not laws, though; as we know from our efforts to impose vicious lawsuits and increasingly draconian restrictions against anyone who seeks an abortion, it is pointless to legislate about a problem. Some things, you are just born with and must accept; guns are one of them.
The heart is a uniquely American problem. Johnson, I hear, had his removed long ago, which allows him to look on the suffering of his fellow man with equanimity and detachment, because of his serene awareness of the Divine Plan.
Is it fatalism or is it nihilism?
God, grant conservatives the serenity to accept the mass murders they cannot change … until they lose their spouses, sons and daughters to them.