Pudgy Politician Packin'

“Maybe this is crazy, but I think the right to own a gun is trumped by the right not to be shot by one.”

~ Andy Borowitz

I was scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed yesterday when this photo of an overweight white fellow packing heat caught my eye:

Seems it’s a guy named Jonathan Stickland, a Republican politician from Texas whose website describes him as a “Conservative Christian Republican” who supports “limited government, transparency, limiting regulation and most importantly [representing] the voters, not the lobbies.”

Stickland, who represents the 92nd District in the Texas House of Representatives, obviously doesn’t mean the gun lobby when he says “not the lobbies.” It’s a pretty strong expression of support to pose at your desk with a Glock G38 affixed to your right hip.

Interestingly, Stickland’s photo appeared directly above a link someone posted to an interactive map depicting all the gun deaths that have occurred in this country in the 98 days since the Sandy Hook massacre. In just 13 weeks, gun violence has killed at least 2,243 people, according to Huffington Post. (Slate magazine’s gun-death tracker puts the number of people who've died as a result of gun violence since Newtown even higher at 2,923.)

Not surprisingly, one can find a number of pro-Second Amendment groups in Facebook, including “I Love My Gun Rights” and “Protect the Second Amendment.” These groups post images and memes with captions like “Gun control means using both hands,” “Washington didn't use his right to free speech to defeat the British, he shot them” and “Guns don’t kill people – well, unless your (sic) stupid of course!” One group administrator captioned a photo of hundreds of handguns hanging on a closet wall as follows: “This must be heaven.”

I can’t relate to anyone who defines heaven as hanging out in a closet with more weapons than there are pins in a bowling alley.

Last Thursday, Congress passed federal legislation addressing firearms – the first since Sandy Hook. You might assume the new laws tighten federal restrictions aimed at preventing criminals from getting guns, right? Wrong. The laws were advanced by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and actually weaken federal firearm law. Six gun provisions were passed as riders attached to the continuing resolution funding the government through September. While all six had been federal law since 2004, each was approved by Congress on a year-to-year basis only. Now, four of the provisions are permanent.

Click here to read “The First Federal Gun Laws To Pass Since Newtown Are All NRA Approved.”

I don’t understand this. Like Jacobim Mugatu, Will Ferrell’s character in the 2001 film Zoolander, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. How is it that politicians can get away with passing pro-gun legislation mere weeks after 20 first graders are massacred in their classrooms by a guy wielding his mommy’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle? How can these NRA puppets sleep at night or look in a mirror?

Speaking of crazy, did you catch Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreeing with a network contributor that Americans need assault weapons to protect ourselves from Al Qaeda operatives and invaders from Iran? The fact that the Fox News channel reaches 102 million households is a lot more worrisome to me than the thought of Persian soldiers storming our beaches.

There was a lot of coverage last week of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) announcement that Senator Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill to ban assault weapons wouldn't be considered because it didn't have the votes. (This is in spite of the fact that polls show over 60 percent of Americans support it.) According to Time.com, “Feinstein’s proposal to prohibit military-style weapons will still get a vote as an amendment to the gun legislation that Democrats debate. But she is all but certain to need 60 votes from the 100-member Senate to prevail, and she faces solid Republican opposition as well as likely defections from some Democrats.”

Did I mention that I feel like I’m taking crazy bills, and that I don’t understand how these folks can look in a mirror at night? I knew that Harry Reid’s testicles were smaller than popcorn kernels but I didn't realize so many of his fellow lawmakers were similarly endowed.

Which brings us back to State Representative Stickland, the tubby dude who feels the need to roam the halls of the State Capitol Building in Austin armed to the teeth. He must feel threatened by all the savage Injuns and shuffling zombies found in the Lone Star State. I’m thinking not everything is bigger in Texas.


P.S. We just had a pro-gun rally here in Lansing last Wednesday that was attended by hundreds. Not all the fools are in Texas.

Sources: Thinkprogress.org, Time.com, Slate.com, Huffingtonpost.com.