I was deeply, deeply saddened when I heard about events over the weekend in Arizona.  It says a lot about the state of the nation, the state of our woefully inadequate mental health infrastructure, and the road ahead (and to the right). 

You have only to look a few miles North to New Hampshire, where the legislature voted last week to overturn a ban on concealed weapons in the State House to see where all this is going.



One state rep, Al Baldasaro (whose grandfather was once the mayor of Cambridge), says that carrying a concealed weapon makes him safer.  He also suggested, in comments to the Globe, that "the shame" in the Arizona massacre "is that not one person had a gun.’’

Never mind the likelihood that had another gunman been present and a shoot-out ensued more people would have been injured or killed.  Far be it from me to rain on anyone's little Dirty Harry fantasy. 

But that fantasy is partly to blame for real world tragedies like the one that took place in Arizona over the weekend.  Just sayin.

Most of us don't live in Rep. Baldasaro's fantasy world, but Baldasaro and his ilk are bound and determined to force it on us.  The thing of it is, the gun lobby — the NRA — does not represent the majority of Americans.  Recent polls indicate it doesn't represent a majority of gun owners or even a majority of its own members. 

Much like the war, civil rights on the home front, and the economy, most Americans get it.  It's a minority of malevolent interests that are moving the nation toward the brink.

Most of us don't think it's too much to ask that someone wishing to purchase a gun be subject to some sort of registration and screening process.  In Arizona, Jared Loughner was able to walk into a store, flash an ID, and buy a glock.  And Loughner was not your typical "but he was always such a nice young man" lone killer.  People with even a casual acquaintance with him had expressed a fear of him — a fear that he was armed and dangerous — well before he snapped.

Granted, Arizona is extreme.  As Gail Collins noted in the Times Sunday , Arizona got 2 points out of a possible 100 in the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence state score card, "avoiding a zero only because its Legislature has not — so far — voted to force colleges to let people bring their guns on campuses."

In Massachusetts, as the Globe's Brian McGrory has noted , "a prospective gun owner seeking a permit [is required] to apply to the local police chief, complete a gun safety training course, and submit three letters of recommendation. The department conducts a background check that includes criminal and mental health records. All of this can take weeks."

And if you're in a mad rush to buy a glock 19, you probably shouldn't be buying one.  (And they're illegal in Massachusetts anyway.)

But the argument of so many gun nuts that the more people carrying guns the safer we all are is a sad comment on society.  It bespeaks an assumption about our fellow citizens that is corrosive to the very idea of civility.  And laws that make it easy to buy guns, aside from not making us safer, also communicate that assumption that we need them to arm against each other loud and clear.

There are always bad elements in society.  We do two things to enable them: we put little to no resources into an effective mental health infrastructure, and we elect them to represent us in the legislature.

One of the deep, abiding assumptions of gun culture is that the ability to destroy another human being is a right in circumstances which it is within our individual judgment to determine.  Jared Loughner felt he had that right when he took the lives of six people and altered forever the lives of many others last weekend.  But would anyone else call his judgment sound?

Some gun nuts live in a fantasy world much like Loughner's.  And some of them are lawmakers, making real-world laws that enable others like them to turn society into a shooting gallery.

And that ain't right.