Use a car, go to jail

The rapid fire rhetoric surrounding the shooting resort idea continue to ricochet. Seemingly everyone with a mouth who doesn’t know a pistol from pastrami is a self-appointed firearms expert now, with endless wisdom to dispense on the Commonwealth at large. As for me, I don’t care about the shooting resort issue one way or the other.

But if public safety is the issue, let’s put things in perspective. Perhaps the Commonwealth should stop issuing drivers licenses to bozos who can’t drive…but that day doesn’t seem to be arriving.

Guns don’t scare me. Middle Road does. And any mouth breathing loser of sufficient age is issued a license to kill, and can inexpertly aim two tons of steel down the road and kill you or I with impunity.

If you’re unlucky enough to be a victim of such negligence, it’s your tough luck. Equal opportunity, baby: the stupid have a right to be stupid, and YOU gotta pay the price.

Sorry, but a shooting resort isn’t as frightening of a proposition as a T-100 truck is. No way…not even close.

What’s funny about the shooting resort issue is the amount of hysteria it unleashed. I haven’t heard so much shrill and nasal whining since someone put sand in a Pi Beta Phi stash of Vaseline. Soviet style public education, along with the never ending socialist rhetoric in the broad media, has instilled some kind of phobia that totally and utterly short circuits any cognitive ability on some scores. The firearms gig–and not by mistake–is certainly a target of such efforts.

And it probably means that I’m the one remaining person in this entire Commonwealth who simply doesn’t care one way or the other about the entire controversy. But it pegged the whine-o-meter, hitting a level that could only be exceeded if Uncle Sam choked off our supply of food stamps.

Which introduces a task I’d like the press to address: perhaps we could refuse to report on this firearms issue unless something intelligent is said about it. That’s not such an onerous criteria, is it? Ok, maybe it is, but with the mounting pile of serious issues to address–namely, the sinking economy and the fact that the hemlines in Garapan haven’t gotten any higher lately–let’s have some priorities, please. Maybe the whiners and the cry babies should find other public venues for their frustration.

Unfortunately, I know just what venue that would be…Middle Road, after a road-slicking rain, weaving inexpertly through traffic at 55 per.

Me, I like the old line from a PR campaign in California: “Use a gun, go to jail.” In a commission-of-a-crime context, I’m all for that. So how about this? “Use a car, go to jail,” in the commission-of-an-accident context. I’m all for that, too.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.