How much longer can we wait to stop this gun violence madness

It’s not the gun violence that is so troubling as much as it is the intolerance, i.e., the bigot who gets behind that gun that creates so much havoc.

Yes, yes, crazy madmen are said to be the perpetrators of the massacres we’ve suffered in America lately — from Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ shooting two years ago this month in Tucson, Ariz., to the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting, the gunning down of two people in the mall near Portland, Ore., and finally, the worst of them all, the massacre of children in Newtown, Conn. — but underlying all of this killing are the minds of people awash in paranoia and hate.

Just ask CNN’s Piers Morgan, who voluntarily was confronted live, on the air, by rabid right-wing radio show host Alex Jones in Morgan’s television program Jan. 7, which covered the issue of gun control.  Jones lit into Piers so fast, so violently, like waving around a rhetorical gun that it was beyond sickening to watch.

Jones ranted on and on, shouting, jabbing his finger repeatedly in Morgan’s face, demanding that Piers Morgan be deported back to Britain immediately.  Jones has even sent a petition to the White House demanding Morgan’s deportation.  As of this past week, Jones says there are 106,000 signatures from people wanting to ship Piers back where he came from, posthaste.

“You’re a hatchet man of the New World Order!”  Jones screamed hysterically at Morgan.  “I’m not afraid of you.  I came here (to CNN) and I got in your redcoat usurper hatchet man’s face and I told him to go to hell!”

And, “The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting, it’s there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs!”  Jones loudly, defiantly proclaimed.

And that’s the least of what Jones’ was carrying on about.  He claims CNN security cut short his appearance (I watched the program in horrified fascination; Jones was three-quarters of an hour on the program, hardly a short-time presence) and he had been removed from the CNN studio.  He also promised, in pure frenzy that “1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms.”

I’m at a loss as to why Jones thinks we need to do the Revolutionary War all over again, but Jones is no stranger to wild conspiracy theories.  He believes he’s going to be murdered by undercover police.  He is convinced the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, was engineered by the United States government — the George W. Bush government.  He says President Obama is using drones against American citizens.  On and on, and on, there is no conspiracy theory too wild for Jones.

But behind every one of Jones’ conspiracy convictions, underlying his frothing paranoia is a boiling hate.  He’s a man who says he’s rebuilt the Branch Davidian church after the flaming death of its leader, David Koresh back in 1993.  He’s made dozens of films on his conspiracy theories, and currently airs his radio show out of Austin Texas.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps a close eye on hate groups and hatemongers, says, rightly so, that Jones and his kind have “exploited racial animosities” to “appeal to the fears of the anti-government Patriot movement.”

Compare him to former Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband, the stoic and heroic astronaut Mark Kelly, who these days have launched a national campaign to fight gun violence.  Giffords, who knows a few things about being shot, and her husband very recently took the time to talk privately with the families of the victims of the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

But that didn’t stop Connecticut state Rep. DebraLee Hovey, a Republican, to get on Facebook and demand, “Gabby Giffords, stay out of my towns!”

So, Ms. Hovey, are you a little sensitive, a bit resentful toward Giffords?  Are you convinced Giffords deliberately got herself shot so as to make a liberal statement on gun control?  Do you really think Giffords and her husband went to Newtown as a political stunt to make you look bad because you are another one of the right-wingers who can’t shut up about the need to arm every man, woman and child in America?

And you had the gall to speak at the tribute to Newtown on Dec. 19 at Connecticut state capital building.

With people like Jones and Hovey (Jones makes Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck look like serene angels; Hovey is just an idiot), with the National Rifle Association leadership saying every teacher in America needs to be armed, it’s no wonder controlling gun violence in America will be a tough task to accomplish.

If you think I am tossing around the words bigot, intolerance and hate in connection with guns like burnt-out musket ashes, I am most certainly not.  As the late Ted Kennedy’s son, Patrick Kennedy, noted on Piers Morgan’s follow-up show Tuesday, American society is devolving, is losing its grip, is sinking faster and deeper into a miasma of incoherent rantings from the right wing, who can’t have a common-sense debate on guns or anything else.

While Kennedy (don’t forget the Kennedy family understands a few things about the dire necessity of gun control) may feel our current society is a hopeless mess, and while there’s no doubt the Tea Party stirred up a wasp’s nest of craziness, taking the American people into political hostage, and still fiercely controlling the minds of the Republican Party, I don’t think we have gone into reverse evolution to the point we are nothing more than troglodytes.

Yet make no mistake, the levels of hate in America are as strong and bitter and wild as they were in the 1960s during the civil rights era.  They are as virulent as the feelings that created the Civil War.  They are as tragic as the genocide and “trails of tears” of white people against Native Americans in our past.  There is as much hate and paranoia still left over from the American Puritans that condemned innocent people to hang for the sin of nonexistent witchcraft during the Salem, Mass., witch trials in 1692.

In 2013, don’t you think it’s long past time to get beyond being so damn intolerant?  That we’re long past due to come to grips with our abuse of guns?  That we’ve got to come to our senses and stop the gun violence madness, the hateful paranoia that fuels this craziness?

How much longer can we wait?  And how many more innocent people, and young people must die before we do something?

Or are we already too late?

Jodeane Albright is an award-winning columnist/blogger and community editor for the Idaho State Journal.