LETTER: Gun control just may be necessary after all

Being a squinty-eyed, wary old outdoorsman, let alone a lifelong Montanan, it’s painful to make the transition to a new mindset; a grudging, grinding, gagging acceptance that our nation needs some calculated, calibrated measure of gun control.

It stirs the bile to envision the feds gaining greater leverage upon our waning freedoms, but regretfully, “progress,” as defined by the advent of social media, has broadened our state’s borders and encroached on our narrow minds. The catchphrase, “It is what it is” bears grim truth to that emerging reality.

And within that reality, scattered hither and yon upon our collective landscapes, lie nutcases and wackos with a poison ivy itch to warrant headlines or act out seedy B movie scripts. Would-be terrorists squirming for action beneath our own home bedsheets, not necessarily robed in white cotton and turbans.

It was inevitable. We have, for the most part, unwittingly, fostered a festering culture of blank-faced, conscience-free robots who have intravenously nourished themselves on sparkly visual stimulation and suggestive, repetitive, redundant Rap-style rhythm and lyrics.

Equipped with leering grins and a $.79 box of Diamond stick matches, they possess the euphoric power to render our lands to cinder, to drain local, state, and national reserves far more efficiently than their international counterparts. Freak weather systems, lightning, drought, and global warming, take heed; we’ll see that bet, and raise you one whole pile of chips...

Throw convenient access to guns in the mix, and you have the erotic joy of immediate long- or close-range blood-soaked gratification close at hand.

Some frightening realities lie brooding on tomorrow’s horizon. Some gnawing choices between liberties and liabilities. Many, like myself, might wear a wry grin of relief to know we may not live to witness them, but an equal, crushing despair that those whom we love will continue to suffer from such insanity. —Gary Vinson, Kalispell