Dangerous People

Mitt Romney was on The Kudlow Report on CNBC last night. He said the following about gun control legislation:

Our challenge is not the laws. The challenge is the people who are distracted from reality and do unthinkable, unimaginable, inexplicable things.

I suppose these are the new clothes for the guns-don’t-kill-people-people-kill-people emperor. Still, I suspect that, with proper psychological analysis, we may be able to home in on an explanation for the acts of James Holmes, covering everything from his gradual and methodical accumulation of an arsenal to the horrifying way in which he put that arsenal to use.

It is not that I am not worried about people like Holmes or the circumstances behind their actions. Like everyone else I worry about what seems to be the inevitable recurrence of such actions. For that reason I am more worried about the “unthinkable, unimaginable, inexplicable things” that politicians do. We are a country whose electorate has come to see politicians as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. As long as they maintain their respective holds on political power, they will remain part of the problem, including that part that makes it impossible for us to find viable alternative candidates for whom we can cast our votes.