"The First Step To Talking About Guns Is To Shut Up About Guns...."

Old joke.

"It ain't the school...it's the principal of the thing."

New spin.

Coming up.



Speaking to reporters in Washington D.C. in the wake of a deadly attack on the Washington Navy Yard on Monday which left at least 12 people dead, Dr. Janis Orlowski, the chief medical officer at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, went off on gun violence in the United States. She said that "there is something evil in our society" that Americans must "try to eradicate."

"There's something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate," Orlowski said after decrying what she called "senseless trauma."

"There's something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries," she continued. "There is something wrong."

"I would like you to put my trauma center out of business," Orlowski added. "I really would. I would like to not be an expert on gunshots ."



One inevitability amongst all the tragic inevitabilities that result from events like this is the ramping up of the rhetoric on the issue of gun control in this country.

Let's get to the chase by way of cutting.

Rhetoric, debate, even discussion about gun control in this country is a waste of time.

Because in order for discussion, by its nature, to take place, argument must sit in the corner and shut up.

And the emotional barnacles unshakably attached to the good ship Second Amendment all but guarantee that argument will be the boom box blasting away at our psyches for a long time to come, drowning out any calm, thoughtful NPR like sounds of discussion.

It occurs to me, though, that we're all still missing the real point.

The point that was so eloquently, and spot on, expressed by the doctor from D.C.

The evil.

Not the means, loaded or other wise, of acting out that evil.

Truth be told, this isn't a new revelation.

The pro-gun folks in America have long been bleating that the guns aren't the issue.

Usually in the form of that oldie but goodie, "guns don't kill people...yada, yada".

The thing is that that's the thing.

But the energy being consumed in order to keep the bitching and bickering and bleating going are taking away all the energy and attention and focus from finding a way, any way, to accomplish the goal set forth by Dr. Orlowski.

Eradicating the evil in our society.

Or, at the very least, that particular evil.

Concentrating, for a change, on somehow changing the end.

Instead of foolishly advocating for or against the means.

Janis Orlowski has, in her weariness at the horror of it all, hit the nail on the head.

Or the bulls eye dead center for you right to bear arms enthusiasts.

It ain't the school, it's the principal of the thing.

And it ain't the gun in the hand at the end of that arm..

It's the evil residing in the brain at the other end of it..