Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

There’s never an egg timer around when you need one.

As details began to emerge in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, one of my Facebook ephemera went toxic on our collective hrm-hrms, asking us all if now Obama was going to require background checks for purchase of cooking vessels. Yes. He went there, and in record time. We hadn’t even finished counting the wounded and he’d already turned this tragedy into a Second Amendment diatribe.

My mind–being the thing it is–immediately went to the satirical end state. I imagined this fellow on paramilitary maneuvers in the upstate backwoods, pressure-cooker at the ready. I imagined him protesting the proposed ban on all pressure-cookers of greater than an 8-quart capacity. I saw him applying for a carry permit, so he could bring his pressure-cooker with him on his travels. I envisioned him, standing proudly before his arrayed collection of WWII pressure-cookers, including his favorite, a Japanese rice-cooker manufactured in Manchukuo. I pictured him as the charismatic leader in a new front against the War on Liberty, ready to lay down his life for the Amendment that read:

A well fed Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Large Cooking Vessels, shall not be infringed.

To him, background checks to purchase pressure cookers were just the thin edge of the wedge.

Then I came back to reality.

Will we put pressure cookers behind the counter? Will we, in the wake of this crime, begin tracking sales of these vessels, watching the lawful instead of the lawless?

Turn it around.

If every week we saw a couple of children die because of pressure cookers accidents, we might consider such measures. If every day over 80 Americans died due to pressure cooker violence, you’re damned right we would.  We’d lock those puppies up so tight you’d need to pass a psych-eval just to see one.

But much as he wants this to be, this isn’t about that. This is not about the Second Amendment.

This is about unjustifiable violence. This is about an indefensible attack on the innocent. This is about a hideous tragedy in one of our most storied cities on one of their proudest days.

This is about Boston, and the people of that town, and their admirable, almost unbelievable strength and resilience in the face of this monstrous crime.

#staystrongBoston

k