Constitutional Wrongs

I have finally been able to reconcile my internal conflict about whether my visceral response to the school shooting in Connecticut should be to cry or to vomit. As it happens, thanks to the combination of the actual tragedy of lives lost and the tragically offensive commentary in response to the incident from many on the political "right", it turns out that both reactions are equally appropriate. The crying speaks for itself while the right-wing driven urge for reverse peristalsis is simply a question of sanity. What other sane reaction is possible when right-wingers decry politicizing a tragedy by raising the issue of gun control while their talking heads - most prominently former Governor Mike Huckabee - attribute the event to god being "systematically removed" from schools? The stupidity of the latter point is hopefully obvious, but the former notion is frankly even more ridiculous. This is not some abstract debate about principle - this is life and death. There is nothing more important in politics - ever. And to those who are possessed by some form of mania (I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt) that requires you to cite the Second Amendment to the US Constitution as the reason firearms should not be subject to common sense controls, allow me to point out that the same US Constitution originally specified that in electoral terms most African-Americans were only worth 3/5 that of the majority of white men - with even less value being ascribed to women. Perhaps there are some in the Republican party who think the Constitution got it right in the first place, but again I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Whether the outcry from the right over comments like Huckabee's will display the same level of offense they mustered for those who raised matters like closing the so-called "gun show loophole" or restricting access to high-capacity magazines will say a lot about the kind of American values they truly hold.