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Here's something people need to understand about gun nuts: They really think the world revolves around them. And they simply do not care that the loving object of their fetish is certain to inspire fear and terror, or at the very least profound concern, in every person they encounter -- and quite reasonably so.

Last summer I went down in the Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana, a tourist attraction wherein people hike in guide-led groups deep into a spectacular set of caves, not far from Three Forks. About midway down I noticed that one of our fellow hikers was packing a pistol on a holster on his hip.

As we emerged from the cave, I asked him why he felt he needed a pistol to go with a group of tourists into a confined cave where any shot is likely to ricochet and harm someone. He shrugged and said, "Well, you never know when the bad guys are gonna do their thing."

I looked at him and chuckled. "Sure, but how the hell do I know that you're not the bad guy?"

He shrugged and smiled. That wasn't his problem.

Obviously, the answer was that I didn't, and couldn't, know that. The only solution was to pack my own semiautomatic.

Which brings us to the most recent demonstration of "gun rights" by a couple of blithering morons in Portland, courtesy of KPTV:

Two men carrying assault rifles on their backs said they were simply exercising their Second Amendment right, but police said they scared plenty of people.

Calls started coming in to 911 dispatchers shortly before 2 p.m. Wednesday. Callers said two men with guns strapped to their backs were walking through the area of Southeast Seventh Avenue and Spokane Street in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood.

Officers arrived in the area and contacted both 22-year-old men. They were carrying rifles openly on their backs and were valid concealed handgun license holders in Oregon.

The men told officers they were hoping to educate the public about gun rights.

Officers explained that they were likely to continue generating 911 calls from alarmed people in the area, which would require a police response. Officers reported neither man seemed interested in those concerns.

No, of course they weren't interested. It seems not to occur to these guys that brandishing a gun is an implied threat. In reality, of course, it more than occurs to them -- most gun nuts positively revel in the fear-inducing power of their weapons. But they want to make this disingenuous argument -- that people ought to be able to just walk around with their guns openly and not scare anyone -- because what they really want is to be able to openly display their manhoods.

This argument also disingenuously pretends that the people in this neighborhood are being irrational by responding with fear and panic. Reality check: The last thing most of the victims of the recent spate of mass shootings saw was someone brandishing a gun in a place where they would have no reason to do so. Is it a surprise that this sight would inspire fear? On the contrary, it only makes sense.

But no, the only thing that matters to these fools is that they can make a statement. Well, they make one, all right: They made irrevocably clear how utterly helpless and vulnerable ordinary citizens are to the presence of a gun threat, because the gun-rights lobby has so skewed the laws that packing an assault rifle into a shopping area will not get you arrested.

Because to these clowns, brandishing an assault weapon is "peacefully exercising your rights in public":

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Quick quiz. On January 2011, just two days after Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 14 -- including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- with a Glock semiautomatic, Putz took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to:

a) argue for bans on semiautomatic guns
b) propose measures that would prevent mentally ill individuals from acquiring firearms
c) call for greater security for members of Congress
d) complain that Democrats were saying mean things about Sarah Palin and the GOP

If you guessed "D" -- you're right!

Well, he's at it again -- this time in USA TODAY. And in the wake of this shooting spree -- a massacre which took the lives of 20 children -- Putz is mostly outraged that "liberals" are saying mean things about the NRA.

Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)...Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA -- like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood -- exists to advocate policies its members want. It's free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.

What's funnier here? Calling the NRA a "civil-rights organization" or comparing it to Planned Parenthood? I mean, one of those groups makes millions lobbying and shilling for gun companies and the other is a non-profit that provides affordable health services for women. See? Same thing!

Also hilarious: Putz writes that "Things Aren't Really That Bad" while simultaneously arguing that we need armed guards in every elementary school in the United States.

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Piers Morgan encountered the gun nuts' gun nut, Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners of America, on his CNN show last night, and blew apart when he realized his guest was certifiable. (If only he had asked Pratt his views about public schools to boot.)

The result, anyway, was highly amusing, producing entertaining exchanges such as this:

PRATT: I honestly don't understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It's incomprehensible.

MORGAN: You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?

PRATT: It seems to me that you're morally obtuse. You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element. And I don't know why you want to be the criminal's friend.

MORGAN: What a ridiculous argument. You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever.

And then there was the way it all wrapped up:

MORGAN: Yes, I know -- I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It's down to idiots like you.

Mr. Pratt, thank you for joining me.

When we come back --

PRATT: Thank you for your high-level argument, Mr. Morgan. It's really good.

MORGAN: You know what, you wouldn't understand the meaning of the phrase high-level argument. You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. You shame your country.

PRATT: Disarmament is dangerous. (INAUDIBLE) into role model.

MORGAN: Yes. Sure. I know all about role models and you're not one of them.

Over at the wingnut media-watch outfit Newsbusters, the piteous wailing was tremendous:

It's one thing for an anchor or host to disagree with his guest, but to attack them for a differing view is not what journalism is supposed to be about. Or is that no longer important to CNN as it struggles to get viewers as well as its relevancy back?

The reality is that there are many in this nation that believe that the current gun laws promote violence rather than reduce it, and that if there had been someone armed at Sandy Hook Elementary School as well as the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the shootings either wouldn't have taken place at all or would have resulted in less loss of life.

Irrespective of what the anti-gun left represented by folks such as Morgan think, this is a position that has its place in this debate even after this most recent event.

Yes, that's a position, all right. We would call that the "incredibly stupid and morally disgusting" position. And Morgan has every right to be disgusted. Something would be wrong with him if he weren't.

And something is wrong with Pratt and his defenders.

Transcript below the fold.

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If there is any kind of silver lining lurking in yesterday's horror show at Sandy Hook Elementary, it is this: The national conversation on guns is sharply changing. Perhaps that's because, as Charlie Pierce observes, this bell has been tolling long and loud -- and now we realize that it tolls for us.

It's a reflection of the depraved state of our national conversation that it took a parade of massacres culminating in a schoolhouse full of murdered 5-year-olds to awaken that realization in us. But that's where we are. The question now is how to get out of it.

Particularly because the other half of the conversation -- the gun-rights absolutists who increasingly retreat into paranoid conspiracy theories to justify their worldviews, as well as an insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment asserting that the real purpose of gun ownership is to enable the overthrow of a tyrannical government -- is just plain ol' bug-eyed crazy. Not to mention psychopathically insensate, exemplified by the Brian Fischers and Mike Huckabees out there blaming liberals for the murders.

How exactly are we supposed to conduct a conversation with people who cling insistently to irrational nonsense?

And what is nearly certain to happen next is going to make the conundrum inescapable.

It's clear, both from his remarks yesterday and his radio address today, that President Obama has now screwed up the political courage to try to tackle the matter of the mass proliferation of guns in American society. And that, as it happens, will fall in line with the paranoid predictions of the gun nuts before the election.

You remember what they were saying:

"[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners -- they'll say they left them alone," LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. "In public, he'll remind us that he's put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn't pushed for new gun control laws. ... The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he's actually been good for the Second Amendment."

"But it's a big fat stinking lie!" the NRA leader exclaimed. "It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country."

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Gee, I wish someone would let me know when it's OK to have a national conversation about the mass proliferation of guns in American society and the inevitable slide to lethal violence that creates. Because, you know, it's obvious that now is not the time:

The masked gunman who opened fire in a crowded Oregon shopping mall, killing two people and wounding a third before taking his own life, appeared to have acted in a blind rampage with no known motive, authorities said on Wednesday.

The Tuesday afternoon shooting frenzy at the Clackamas Town Center in the Portland suburb of Happy Valley triggered pandemonium inside the mall at the height of the busy holiday season, sending thousands of shoppers streaming out of the complex as authorities arrived on the scene.

We know precious little right now about the gunman or his motivations:

Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, was the masked man who stormed into Clackamas Town Center Tuesday afternoon, fatally shooting two people and wounding another before turning a gun on himself, police said.

Roberts does not appear to have a criminal history in Oregon, according to court records. He had two speeding tickets earlier this year.

Court records show that Roberts and a woman, Hannah Shoemake, were evicted last summer from their Happy Valley apartment.

Roberts' mother answered her door at her Portland home, but declined to comment to an Oregonian reporter. "I loved my son very much,"she said.

There isn't really a lot to say that hasn't already been said before. But it's worth noting the terror and chaos that these scenes inspire:

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Bill Moyers offers his cogent thoughts on the role of gun-rights outfits like the NRA (and its many, often more rabid, imitators), all of whom in the end are really the well-financed arm of weapons manufacturers, and how they have polluted not just American discourse, but our very way of life itself.

They have done this by several means. One, as Moyers notes, is the legal fraud they have foisted onto the public (and now the courts) with their insistent claim that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own any weapon a person likes. But the other, perhaps more significant, and decidedly more toxic, pollution of American life has been the gun fetishists' violent worldview, manifested in the permeation of guns into all corners of our modern culture -- particularly those where males are involved.

We've written previously about the paranoid fantasizing that is a product of this worldview, and how it translates into cockamamie conspiracy theories that the black President of the USA is secretly plotting to take away all Americans' guns. And we've talked about the deadly consequences of the NRA's incessant weapons-mongering. Obviously, after yesterday's rampage in Aurora, it's even more germane.

One of the more important pieces in this discussion came several months back in the pages of the New Yorker, from Jill Lepore, who explored the history of this gun madness in a piece titled"Battleground America: One nation, under the gun":

In 1986, the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment achieved new legal authority with the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act, which repealed parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act by invoking “the rights of citizens . . . to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.” This interpretation was supported by a growing body of scholarship, much of it funded by the N.R.A. According to the constitutional-law scholar Carl Bogus, at least sixteen of the twenty-seven law-review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment were “written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the N.R.A. or other gun-rights organizations.” In an interview, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

The debate narrowed, and degraded. Political candidates who supported gun control faced opponents whose campaigns were funded by the N.R.A. In 1991, a poll found that Americans were more familiar with the Second Amendment than they were with the First: the right to speak and to believe, and to write and to publish, freely.

“If you had asked, in 1968, will we have the right to do with guns in 2012 what we can do now, no one, on either side, would have believed you,” David Keene said.

Between 1968 and 2012, the idea that owning and carrying a gun is both a fundamental American freedom and an act of citizenship gained wide acceptance and, along with it, the principle that this right is absolute and cannot be compromised; gun-control legislation was diluted, defeated, overturned, or allowed to expire; the right to carry a concealed handgun became nearly ubiquitous; Stand Your Ground legislation passed in half the states; and, in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that the District’s 1975 Firearms Control Regulations Act was unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Two years later, in another 5–4 ruling, McDonald v. Chicago, the Court extended Heller to the states.

I think Lepore's succinct conclusion is almost irrefutable:

When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

As Anthony Robinson put it:

Increasingly, it seems that citizenship is defined not by the community we are and which together we build, but by our right to own and carry a gun. To call this an impoverished notion of citizenship is an understatement. It is an outrage.

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We've had an unusual spike in gun fatalities here in Peacenik Seattle this spring -- twenty-one since January, compared to only three such deaths at the same time a year ago. Everyone is trying to figure out why. And after yesterday, it's not just a rhetorical question.

Because this one was a real wake-up call:

A man described by his family as "angry toward everything" went on a deadly shooting rampage in Seattle on Wednesday, killing five people and critically wounding another before turning a gun on himself hours later as police closed in.

Ian L. Stawicki, 40, was identified by family and law-enforcement officials as the man who shot five people just before 11 a.m. at Cafe Racer Espresso in the University District — a hangout for a tight community of artists and musicians.

Four of the cafe shooting victims died. A fifth victim was fatally shot near Town Hall in downtown Seattle.

This happened not very far from where I live. At the park where my daughter's classmates were playing at their recess, the police came and told everyone to go back to their school and stay inside. Schools closer to the crime scenes were locked down entirely.

Everyone wants to know why this is happening. It isn't hard to figure out a couple of things that were clearly at play here: We're now a society awash in guns at unprecedented levels. And we're also awash in an increasingly untreated population of mentally ill people.

Over at Slog, Jonathan Golob explains:

In Washington State, it is exceedingly difficult to involuntarily commit mentally ill individuals—particularly for extended periods of time—unless someone is an imminent threat to themselves or others. Individuals with illness severe enough to be committed to a mental health facility in other communities are—by plan—allowed to try to integrate into the community.

In place of (costly and arguably inhumane) warehousing of the mentally ill, the plan for decades in Washington state has been to provide aggressive outpatient case management. Psychosis, bipolar disease, depression, anxiety and others are all treatable diseases. The notion—and it's not a bad idea at its core—is to use an army of social workers (state employees) to keep mentally ill people in the community engaged with treatment and the community safe.

Over the same decades, our investment in social services has dwindled. Right-wing propagandists like the Seattle Time's editorial board, Tim Eyman, and everyone you know who has uttered the phrase 'a more efficient state government' are directly responsible for our social service network being gutted, the many safety nets being left tattered and unmanned.

The reign of radical right wing financial policy in Washington State has left (the richest of) us with some of the lowest tax burdens of any community in the United States. The cost is a day like today.

But we haven't only government-gutting conservatives to thank for this problem. Because we can also thank the far-right paranoid gun nuts who run large national "gun rights" organizations for having gutted any kind of reasonable restraints on the public's access to guns.

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The National Rifle Association and the assorted far-right gun nuts who make up the gun lobby, as we recently pointed out, really are creating an extremely problematic environment for any post-election America in which Barack Obama has won re-election -- because, thanks to their fact-free and irresponsibly inflammatory attacks on Obama, they've once again convinced a significant segment of the American populace that Obama is secretly plotting to take their guns and their freedoms away.

On the ground, this is playing out in predictably unhealthy ways too -- namely, as the SPLC's Hatewatch recently noted, through skyrocketing weapons and ammo sales:

A hard-hitting propaganda campaign unleashed this year by Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association, may be convincing Americans that President Obama will crack down on gun ownership if he’s re-elected and becomes a lame duck.

Skyrocketing sales of guns and ammunition, along with some shortages due to stockpiling, are reported by many U.S. shops.

“People are worried about a second Obama presidency,” Simon Wallace, sales manager at Merchant Firearms in Phoenix told Hatewatch. Merchant is one of many gun shops that started seeing demand increase around the first of the year. There are shortages of all types of weapons and ammunition, Wallace said.

One sign of the current panic is the number of FBI background checks for prospective gun owners. The background checks hit an all-time high in 2011 – about 16.5 million. In the first four months of this year, according to the FBI, there were about 6.3 million checks – on track to shatter last year’s record.

... “There’s a lot of free-floating fear,” Molchan said in an interview with Hatewatch. “At one end of the spectrum, you have the survivalists and the stockpiling.”

The problem is particularly acute in places like Texas and Arizona, but it's happening nationally. Naturally, this is cause for celebration by the folks at Fox:

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Hey, right-wingers: Let's have a little talk about the coming election.

We realize it's not looking so hot for your side, what with the clown-car primary season we've gotten on the Republican side and all. But really, if you lose, it's not the end of the world.

You know that, we know that. It sucks to be you, but it is what it is. And it's not the apocalypse.

So we here in the world of normal people would like to make a request: Stop telling your followers that it is.

Because we know, with night-follows-day-certainty, that you folks have some violent and mentally unstable people lingering among your ranks. And we know with the same certainty that, after the election, these same people will begin acting out violently, usually leaving behind as victims we folks here on Planet Normal, if Obama does indeed win out, as is looking (thanks to GOP ineptitude) increasingly likely.

And it will be all because they believe the crazy-ass crap you guys spew in order to get them all whipped up and eager to vote.

The leading nutcase in this parade has been the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre, who has been warning his fellow right-wingers of a massive Obama conspiracy to destroy the Second Amendment:

If you want a glimpse of a genuine nightmare for America, just look at what’s headed our way.

But unlike a nightmare, this isn’t some fantasy. It’s a very real, very dangerous conspiracy of public deception intended to destroy your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It’s targeted directly at you.

And it’ll succeed unless you recognize it, understand it, and take action now to stop it.

Gosh Almighty! What a nefarious scheme! And here's how it will work:

1. Neutralize gun owners and NRA voters as a political force in national elections, and thereby:

2. Win re-election to a second term in the White House, where they then will be immune to the will of voters and free to continue consolidating and misusing their ever-increasing power to:

3. Prosecute a full-scale, sustained, all-out campaign to excise the Second Amendment from our Bill of Rights through legislation, litigation, regulation, executive orders, judicial fiat, international treaties—in short, all the levers of power of all three branches of government.

Recall what he told the CPAC folks:

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While the Village press keeps presenting Willard as "the moderate" or "the technocrat" or the "sensible" Republican, the candidate himself is giving no indication he's anything of the sort. Check out this completely bizarre exchange in which a wingnut supporter asks Willard if he's going to "come and get my gun."

GUN NUT: There are over 9 million of us in that voting bloc and I just wondered what you're going to do, are you going to allow me to keep my gun, to protect myself and my family, in my home, and not come and get my gun. Because I want to keep it to protect myself and my wife and my family and against a tyrannical government, which I think we're approaching and we are in, very close.

ROMNEY: Thank you, thank you. I believe in the Second Amendment...

For Willard to stand there and thank this loon for saying that the federal government poses a physical threat to him and his family is truly appalling -- a dereliction of duty -- and should instantly disqualify him from the presidency. Seriously. The idea that you need to own a concealed weapon to fight off the FBI and ATF is beyond crazy -- it's black helicopter, Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster, McVeigh-Was-Right crazy.

At least when John McCain was confronted with similar ugliness, he responded appropriately.

Anyway, I hate to break it to this whackjob and thousands of other mouth-breathers just like him, but if the "tyrannical gubmint" -- which has a bunch of missiles, tanks and gunships lying around -- actually decides to take his gun, his cute little concealed hand gun isn't going to be much help.

Moran.

(h/t David)