Here is a sample of what is fed to the masses.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 10/18/2002.

The NRA's aim
By Derrick Z. Jackson

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/291/oped/The_NRA_s_aim+.shtml

A SNIPER IS shooting up the D.C. suburbs. Useless fear has gripped Americans. No news story sells more than when the bull's-eye looms indiscriminately over parts of the nation we have cordoned off as safe, painted in our head as a pristine pastel. Nothing sells more when Americans can identify with that poor woman in the Home Depot parking lot, just trying to load some shelves for her new house into her car, when a bullet from nowhere takes her life.

The maddening part is that despite all our wealth, technological advances, great universities, and the fastest media in the world, Americans have convinced themselves that the bullet indeed came from nowhere. For all the whipping up of fear, Americans do absolutely nothing with it as far as it regards guns.

In other countries, such as Britain and Australia, massacres led to near instantaneous and monumental changes in gun laws. In the United States, school shootings in which middle-class children killed middle-class children did not shock Americans into taking action against guns. Office shootings by disgruntled workers coined the catchy phrase ''going postal'' but otherwise failed to catch our attention.

Individual murders by men of wives and girlfriends come and go without much reflection and certainly without 24-seven CNN coverage. Male politicians have not leapt to make domestic violence a lighting rod for gun control, even after a 1990s study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that home gun ownership dramatically increases a woman's chance of dying from a bullet.

After the Columbine school massacre, there was a moment where it looked as if Americans, at least a sizable segment of American mothers, declared that gun proliferation was out of control in this country and enough needless blood had been shed. That moment was most symbolized by the Million Mom March. That moment was not allowed to stand.

The National Rifle Association, our shadow government, the sniper laying waste to our sanity, hopped back in its van, looking for politicians to scare and issues to gun down. The gun lobby did such a good job in the 2000 elections that outgoing President Clinton said: ''In at least five states I can think of, the NRA had a decisive influence. They've probably had more to do than anyone else in the fact that we didn't win the House this time.''

No political group was happier when George W. Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court in 2000 than the NRA. Once in office, Bush ended a federal gun buyback program. Attorney General John Ashcroft sent out a directive for the FBI to destroy the records of criminal background checks after only one day instead of 90 days.

Ashcroft wrote a letter to the NRA saying that he believes that the Second Amendment grants individuals a constitutional right to own guns. The United States lobbied to water down a UN treaty to restrict global sales of small arms. The views of the NRA have been so thoroughly adopted by Bush that the gun lobby cannot resist gloating.

James Baker, the NRA's chief lobbyist, said Bush is doing ''exactly what they said they would do during the campaign, which is a refreshing change for a politician.'' Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA: ''There's been a sea change on this issue since the 2000 election. Democrats are running away from gun control like the plague, and we are just not being attacked. If they're not agreeing with us, they're silent.''

Until the sniper struck, Bush was resisting even a database to trace bullets and shells found at crime scenes. Now Bush says he will ''explore'' a database. Unless Bush is heavily pressured by the public, this will be a very thin exploration. The NRA is screaming that any kind of records kept on guns and bullets amounts to national gun registration. This is a nation where every car is registered, where every credit card transaction goes into a database, and where every Internet transaction seems to result in every marketer knowing your business. Yet it still does not have the courage to force people to register lethal weapons. All because of the NRA and our fear of it.

It would be nice to think the D.C. sniper by himself could be a galvanizing force for gun control. But if children killing children, coworkers killing coworkers, and spouses killing spouses cannot move us, it is hard to see how a sniper, someone who is much easier to write off as a deranged alien, is going to be a true lightning rod.

The only way the sniper can be a catalyst for change is if Americans finally start adding up how many people, from the deranged to domestic abusers to disgruntled students and workers, are able to act out their rage through a gun simply because our inaction has made firearms so available. Then our fear might be of some use.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is [email protected].

Again, the typical ignorant drivel.

The same superficial crap I've been hearing everywhere else in the media.  Give us dopey Americans some credit, willya?  We know the bullets came from someplace, we also know that the guns didn't jump up and fire themselves.

And what of "proliferation" in Australia and the UK since they're wonderful bans went into effect?  The IRA never seems to be disarmed, nor do common street thugs all over the place.  So much for the "obvious, common sense solution."

Edited to add:  I don't much like car registration either.  It never seems to accomplish its aims (well, it does separate me from my money)--but it hardly ever aids in recovering stolen cars or preventing deaths, injuries and property damage.  A perfect example of how registration is a total failure.