Recently in Gun Control Category

"'The world is a tough place,' he said with a chuckle. 'You're never going to get out of it alive.'" A damn dirty ape no longer, Charlton Heston, 1923-2008. (Between this and Buckley, it's been a bad year so far for the patriarchs of conservatism.)

Update: Hmmm. After reading up on him further, it seems Heston (nee John Carter!) was a late-comer to the conservative movement, and even to the NRA philosophy: "In his earlier years, Heston was a liberal Democrat, campaigning for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963...In 1968, following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Heston...called for public support for President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968...He was also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he saw as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He opposed the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America. He turned down John Wayne's offer of a role in The Alamo, because the film was a right-wing allegory for the Cold War."

"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns." Richard Widmark, 1914-2008.

Paging Yuri Orlov: By way of Dangerous Meta, a new Congressional study finds the US atop the leaderboard in terms of selling weaponry to the developing world. "Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the top buyers...The study makes clear also that the United States has signed weapons-sales agreements with nations whose records on democracy and human rights are subject to official criticism."

I'll grant I have as much morbid curiosity as the next man, probably more, and I'll admit to have found it interesting that -- judging from his ubiquitous Youtube-suicide dump (I'm sure y'all can find it) -- the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung Hui, also seems to have recently seen Oldboy (and The Killer.) That being said, I'm with the families of the deceased: It was ridiculously offensive on the part of the press scorps to give this murderous chump his much-desired fifteen minutes, even after death, and to plaster his visage all over every media outlet for 18 hours like a two-bit Travis Bickel. CNN's clearly been trying to rectify by putting the victims on their front page at the moment, but too little, too late. I'm reminded of Sirhan Sirhan's famous quote: "They can gas me, but I am famous. I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do." Please, let's not play into these sick bastards' games anymore. I'm sorry Cho's life turned out to be a sad and pathetic one, but let him just be consigned to the ignominious dustbin of psycho killer history, where he belongs. He was a lonely, depressed, raging, and homicidal young man, who lost any claim to sympathy when he started randomly firing at people -- We're not going to understand him any better by throwing up his obscene posthumous vanity portraits in every nook and cranny of the national culture.

That being said, using Cho less as a poster-child for his own sick revenge fantasies and more as one for sensible gun control laws makes a little more sense to me. Now I understand that real gun control is sadly something of a non-starter in this country, and that mandatory gun safety training, for example, is the type of thing that might pay more dividends over time so long as the second amendment remains interpreted as it is. And naturally, the NRA is already ready to push back on any attempt to tie this awful incident to easy access to weaponry. But it seems abundantly clear: Whether we need a new law or just need to enforce the old ones, people who've already been declared certifiable by a federal judge should have a little harder time procuring two firearms than did Cho. Can we at least agree on that?

"They say that 'evil prevails when good men fail to act.' It should just be 'evil prevails.'" Andrew Niccol's Lord of War, which I saw earlier this week, is basically an angrier, more sardonic kid brother to The Constant Gardener. But, while Gardener is probably a better-made work of cinema, I actually enjoyed myself more at Niccol's film. At once a character study of an amoral arms dealer, a bitter tirade againt third world exploitation, and a dark comedy that may run too sour for some tastes, Lord of War is an above-average entrant in the satirical muckraking tradition. And its occasional preachiness is leavened by Nicolas Cage's consistently-amusing and deftly-written performance, most of which is voiceover, at the center of the film.

Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian immigrant to Brighton Beach in the 1980s who, after an inadvertent run-in with the Russian mafia at a local cafe, realizes that guns, like the funeral business, is pretty much always a growth industry. Enlisting his more sensitive sibling (Jared Leto) as muscle and back-up (a.k.a. his "brother in arms"), Orlov embarks on a quest to arm the world and make mad bank doing it. Along the way, he woos a trophy wife (Bridget Moynahan), attracts the ire of both a more-established (and ostensibly more "moral" -- he has politics as well as money in mind) rival (Ian Holm) and an idealistic, go-getter federal agent (Ethan Hawke), scavenges his former homeland after the fall of the USSR (essentially a free-for-all fire sale of tanks, munitions and ordnance), and finds himself in the company of increasingly more sadistic and unsettling despots (notably Eamonn Walker, doing a variation on Liberia's Charles Taylor.)

What keeps Lord of War moving at a brisk clip is Cage's deadpan voiceover, which boasts an impressive arsenal of witty bon mots. Says Orlov of his mission, "There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?" Of his clients in the '80s: "I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Back then, he was always bouncing checks." Of his (brief) attempt to go on the up-and-up: "Thank God there are still legal ways to exploit developing countries." In short, if your sense of humor runs toward the dark and twisted, Niccol's tightly-written script pays dividends.

Whatsmore, unlike Gardener, which at times seemed to wallow in its piety, Lord of War cleverly juxtaposes its increasing contempt for Orlov's vulturine livelihood against Cage's natural amiability and his character's rising fortunes (a la Richard III.) So, even as the story grows blacker, the audience has no place to go. We're forced to empathize, at least to some degree, with Orlov's attempt to achieve his own sick version of the American Dream on the backs of the Third World. Which, in the end, is Niccol's point -- We, too, are complicit in this story. Admittedly, the movie drops the ball somewhat in the last reel and veers too far toward polemic. (Of course, the same can be said of many quality film satires, including Catch-22 and Bamboozled.) But, until then, Lord of War is a disarmingly breezy jaunt through a highly-armed world and proof positive that, occasionally in "message movies," honey catches more flies than vinegar.

"The Senate put off until fall completing a $491 billion defense bill in order to act this week on the National Rifle Association's top priority: shielding gun manufacturers and dealers from liability suits stemming from gun crimes." Well, that sounds much more important than our troops overseas, doesn't it? Looks like Catkiller Frist is shoring up the freakshow base for 2008 at the expense of the American people again. Where's the outrage? Update: The bill passes 65-31.

Well, to no one's surprise, I think John Kerry won again. But, while I'd like to say that the Senator knocked this final debate in Tempe, Arizona out of the park, frankly, he didn't. In the early going, I thought he seemed tired and slightly discombobulated, and, at times when a concise rebuttal could have scored some serious points, Kerry's answers often seemed more wordy and circuitous than necessary. On the other hand, I thought this was Dubya's best performance - he was still smirking and guffawing too much, still distorting the facts, still running from his record, and still demonizing his opponent like the best of 'em, but at least he seemed in full possession of his faculties this time around (perhaps the wire was working tonight.) I did think that Kerry warmed up in the middle third, but he lost focus again during the final questions (Native American blessings? Idears?) That being said, given the relative lack of drama tonight and the playoff baseball on FOX, I highly doubt this final debate will end up altering the current campaign dynamic much.

So there you have it, folks. Barring an October Surprise in the next three weeks, it now all comes down to the ground game, and -- given what we've been hearing regarding voter registration, given the white-hot contempt towards Dubya held by Dems and the ambivalence with which fiscal conservatives and many veterans view this administration, and given the usual tendency of undecideds to break towards the challenger -- turnout is a factor which John Kerry should win handily (barring Diebold shenanigans.) It ain't over yet, to be sure, but right now I'd say that, despite tonight's missed opportunities, John Kerry and John Edwards have put themselves in a solid position to win with their cumulative debate performance. The election is too close to call, definitely, but at this point I feel pretty confident our nation will make the right decision on Nov 2.

So much for local control. GOP gun-nuts -- led by Senator Larry Craig of Idaho -- try to force the District of Columbia to rescind its gun ban and "roll back registration requirements." Republicans, argues DC Mayor Anthony Williams, are 'using our District as a pawn. It's an incredible assault on home rule.'"

The assault weapons ban expires tonight at midnight and, while it may not have been very effective anyway, somehow I get the sense that our homeland would be more secure with it in place. Shame on Dubya, and that goes double for the GOP Congress.

It seems that, for the Republicans, nothing says Homeland Security quite like easy access to assault weapons. "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," notes GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill "Catkiller" Frist of the decade-old assault weapons ban set to end on Monday, despite the fact that 68% of Americans (and 74% of voters, in a separate poll) want to see it renewed. On the House side, perennial GOP freakshow Tom DeLay "dismissed the ban as 'a feel-good piece of legislation' and said flatly that it would expire Monday, even if Mr. Bush made an effort to renew it. 'If the president asked me, it would still be no,' Mr. DeLay said." Don't worry. I doubt he'll ask ya, although the electorate just might come November.