In which the pond sneaks in a double serve of the bromancer for an evening reflection ...

The pond has waited a little while for the dust to settle, but the bromancer has been scribbling away, and because he's the most loved of the reptiles by many, attention must be paid ...

The pond would like to offer a preamble. Having spent early time in the bush, the pond is no stranger to guns. 

There was a seminal moment when an uncle got out his old .303 - he'd been in the AIF - and using a stump for stability, took aim at a crow perched on a fence. 

Though memory probably exaggerates, the pond swears it was a good 200 yards, clear across the back paddock. There was a loud bang, a puff of feathers, and when we raced up to look, not a sign of the crow. It had disintegrated, with just a few remaining feathers scattered about ... and the lambs were safe that night.

At that moment, the pond learned the potency of a long arm handled with skill.

But that's the gun as tool as weapon. There aren't that many vulnerable lambs fearful of crows in Newtown, and no one has a need of a semi- or fully automatic military assault rifle outside the military. Any decent hunter wants to take a fair shot, not blaze away like a hoon in a shooting gallery.

And the notion that someone with a concealed handgun is going to do anything useful against an automatic long arm poking out a 32nd floor window is the sort of delusion only an absolute fuckwit of the Hannity kind could cultivate ...

But here's the thing. In the United States, the genie is long out of the bottle, and there are more weapons than people in the country. 

The Republican party, and so congress, are deep in the pockets of the NRA and gun lobby groups ... how deep can be tracked at Politico here ...

In this context, kids shot at school or people at a country music concert are just wastage, a few at the edge of the herd, and no concern for the herd leaders provided they stay in charge of the gig ...

There is no will to change, and there will be no meaningful change. The pond will be long dead, hopefully by natural causes, before anyone will attempt any meaningful change in the United States. There might be some tinkering at the edges - silencers might not get the nod - that's how brazen and shameless the NRA has become and the GOP complicit - and something might be done about bump stocks - but the United States has taken itself into an exceptionalist wilderness of armed militancy from which it will be almost impossible to return ...

Worse, it's being run by a famously moronic president and a party which is deeply corrupt and morally bankrupt, in a way which makes the word "conservative" a mockery ...

There's nothing much that anyone can say or do or write that will change this state of affairs, so what does the bromancer do?

Well first he tried to equate events in the United States with possible terrorism in Australia ... and what a desperate gambit that is ...

Now a report by some stupid academics turned up on The Drum suggesting that it was all the media's fault that serial killings had increased in the United States, and never mind that media reporting of mass murder in other countries didn't have the same impact ... because getting hold of a mass of semi- and fully automatic weapons takes a bit more doing outside the USA ...

But the sheer stupidity of the bromancer's piece almost tempts the pond into thinking a ban on reptiles scribbling might produce results.

If the authorities have only recently speculated on terror from a height, we're in deep trouble. Charles Whitman went on a rampage back in August 1966, using the 28th observation deck of the University of Texas clock tower, killing some sixteen people (wiki it here). 

The rampage was celebrated - if that's the right word - in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, a drive-in film which goes particularly film buff silly when it has Boris Karloff disarming the psycho killer by confusing him, appearing both up on the screen where the killer has hidden himself to take pot shots at the drive-in crowd, and confronting him in person with his cane ...

It's a bit like the bollard thing in Victoria, another stupid expression of the desire to show that something is being done, even if it's only street art ...

The reality is, if anyone wants to get on a peak hour train or tram in Sydney or Melbourne, they could do much damage, without anything or anyone to stop them ... except sensible control of ANFO and other explosives ...

The important thing is to persuade people that it's better to live than to die for a stupid fundamentalist religion or because killing seems to be the best way to be a nutter. 

The way that the bromancer writes, it's almost as if he wants a jihadist to replicate Vegas down under ...

Well actually no, the United States' problems are the United States' problems, and they shouldn't be used to confuse and conflate the situation here, especially with fundamentalist-inspired terrorism ...

The United States has long had a problem with white terrorism, including but not limited to the Oklahoma City bombing, and an inability to discuss it with any kind of clarity,  and with assorted double standards, and with a government incapable of listening or acting ...

And skipping past Rowe's sensible commentary - with more Rowe here - it has to be said that the bromancer is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, because he was at it again today, though this time, instead of invoking jihadism, he was doing his own impersonation of fundamentalist Catholicism ...

As usual, the focus is on the loon ... but what of the evil of a congress which, deep in the NRA's pockets, refuses to do anything? What of the evil of people who assert their right to carry arms? What of the people who cater to this unhealthy obsession?

If we're going to go full blown rhetorical on questions of evil, what of people who make and sell cigarettes?

What of people who write for a climate denialist rag, in a way which will certainly make life unendurable for people in the future?

Never mind, the bromancer settles for the easy notion of Sin City, and never mind that Vegas and Basin City are two, and that Grand Theft Auto was three or more ...

After those token tilts of the cap, the bromancer gets down to another ritual shrugging of the shoulders ...

And at that moment, "this evil in men's hearts", the pond's heart shrank, and not only because once again women had been denied the chance to have evil in their hearts...

It really is a man's world, this land of reptiles, but the real cause of the pond's dismay was the way that the bromancer had decided to nukethe fridge and jump the Catholic shark ... and blather on about evil, and bring Satan or the devil or Lucifer, call Her what you will, into the discussion ...

Here's a hard truth. A fundamentalist Catholic given to doubts and blathering about the real work of the devil in the world isn't part of any meaningful solution, he's a deeply embedded part of the problem.

For fuck's sake. To be good requires struggle, and Lucifer never goes away, and we should hearken to Catholic mythology?

That's exactly the sort of nonsense that gets us into trouble with Daesh and with the crazed Xian gun-toting militants of the United States ...

We've seen what that leads to, as ably illustrated by Rowe here ...

Well at least the bromancer didn't mention that meaningless thoughts and useless prayers are with the victims, while the hypocrites dance on graves and explain how now isn't the right time to talk about anything that might constitute action or take a step towards a solution, not when blather about Lucifer and pure evil will suffice ...