The Pulse of the Problem

     I'm going to jettison any pretense to literary ability, thematic unity, restraint or even empirical coherence after what happened in Orlando last night. I'm too enraged, not thinking clearly but at least I can guarantee you this much: What I'm about to say comes from the heart and I want to say this while I, a compassionate bisexual man and a liberal, have a full head of steam.
     Omar Mateen is now officially a rotting corpse and that is an incredibly good thing. He walked into the Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, and with an AR15 killed at least 53 gay men and wounded 53 more before finally being put out of his misery by the Orlando Police Department. Every police officer involved should get a commendation and a hefty raise in pay.
     29 year-old Mateen was an Islamist radical from New York City of Afghani descent. According to what his father said, Omar was enraged at the sight of two men kissing and it rankled under his skin until he drove inland from Port St Lucie to Orlando with two guns and an incendiary device.
     It's virtually impossible to imagine such hatred. If it was a singular instance that drove him over the edge, the sight of two gay men kissing, it shows just how dangerous life is, that a momentary and possibly forgettable public display of affection would result in over 100 casualties. He must have known he wouldn't be able to shoot his way out and emerge alive. Yet this is apparently what had happened. He sacrificed his worthless life to show the world how much he hated homosexuality.
     It's not as if the FBI didn't have this piece of shit on their radar. He'd been interviewed by them at least twice that we know of because of his radicalization and I imagine the Bureau is madly looking to see if he indeed had ties to organized Islamic terrorism. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if he had.
     This was the worst act of terrorism on US soil since 9/11 and from a casualty standpoint the worst mass shooting in American history. It may more than double the body count after Virginia Tech and is, thus far, roughly four times the casualty count at Sandy Hook.
     Naturally, all the wingnuts are coming out in lockstep as if deployed by an SS commandant offering their completely worthless prayers, jeremiads against the gay community and preemptively accusing gunsense activists of politicizing the deaths of over 50 people after politicizing in 2012 the deaths of four in Benghazi. To these people, I say fuck you and your prayers and politics. You want to live in a guns everywhere zone, go to fucking Somalia.
     If your prayers were worth shit, it they were efficacious then we wouldn't have so many acts of terror, now would we? But Rick Scott, one of the NRA's darlings, just said minutes ago the most important thing we can do is "pray." He also shook his bald bullet head and said he couldn't imagine such a horrible thing taking place in these United States. After Columbine. After Ft Hood. After Virginia Tech. After Sandy Hook. "Who could've known?"
     Another right wing piece of shit, TX Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, immediately took to his Twitter account and put up a pair of memes containing Biblical verses that seemed to excuse Mateen's massacre while vilifying the gay community. Each of them also featured a small campaign logo on the bottom lest anyone accuse him of politicizing this tragedy.
     OK, I'm about to say something that not one single liberal in the land has the guts to say (at least I've never heard anyone once say it). And as usual, it falls to me to do it.
     Obama should take away everyone's guns. There, it's out. This will be the Jade Helm moment that wingnuts have been slavering for, the day when Obama takes away all their guns but after this, he should. Then they should be made to earn them back. After all, if you get into an accident and hit or kill people, damage property, you get your license suspended then you have to earn that back.
     People will die, sure, just like Waco (which started out as a showdown over firearms violations) but people are dying, any way. This way, the right people will be dying. And they should lose their guns if they can't stow them away properly or misuse them. We're the only country in the world in which dozens of toddlers shoot their parents and others every single year.
     So take their guns away. Then set up a national registry where we can keep track of every gun owner in this country. Mandate ultra stringent background checks, lengthy waiting periods and to attend, and pass, gun safety classes held by the local police or Sheriff's department. And let's do away with the ridiculous loopholes that bypass background checks for internet or gun show sales.
     There is no earthly reason why an individual should be allowed to have possession of hundreds of guns including full automatics and literally hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. When people collect magazines or cats in large numbers we call it "hoarding" and those who do it "nuts." Hoard guns and ammo, you're a "patriot."
     Take their guns away. All of them.
     Because this shit can't continue. When dozens of people die in a single shooting including children and college students who think they're in a safe environment, when over four dozen members of a targeted group are shot and killed in a single building, then we have a problem. We Americans as a whole are an international embarrassment. People in other countries think our entire nation is 1881 Tombstone (which at least actually had gun control laws) and that all 320,000,000 of us are gun-toting yahoos.
     We need to pressure the State Department to list the NRA as a terrorist organization and hammer home the message that they are not in fact a gun owners lobby but a gun and ammo manufacturer's lobby and that they're playing their dues-paying members like the suckers they are.
     Guns don't kill people. NRA lobbyists, gun and ammo executives and Republicans kill people in the name of greed and power and continued incumbency.
     And as for Omar Mateen, I hope his 72 virgins are all lesbian, right wing gun nut Tammy Bruce and that they're all strapped to the gills. Because I can't think of a more divine injustice for that piece of shit.