Guns: What on God's Earth is McCain Thinking?

"I hope that we can find better ways of identifying people such as this sick young man so that we can prevent them from not only taking action with guns but with knives or with anything else that will harm their fellow citizens. [..] I strongly support the Second Amendment and I believe the Second Amendment ought to be preserved — which means no gun control."

- Sen. John McCain


John McCain has decided to pander to a South Carolina crowd and flaunt America's grief in its face by attempting to politically isolate the cause of the recent massacre as a mental health issue, pretending that weapons had nothing to do with what occurred. I'd wager most people would sense his stunning lack of empathy to such a level that they will remember it long after he said it.

To have John McCain sticking the gun issue so bluntly and directly in our faces after the worst massacre on a college campus in American history is as ugly as the photos of Cho with his guns in our faces - played endlessly and sickeningly by NBC and other television media.

This isn't Walker, Texas Ranger. This is America with real families with real children who expect that their top leaders will preside over a just and safe society.

Even President Bush President has had the decency and respect to say (in his own way), "Now is not the time to do the debate until we're actually certain about what happened and after we help people get over their grieving."

McCain's showing his ugly side - proudly.

In my view, what he has done and said at a time like this is far more offensive than anything Don Imus ever could have said.

This is the time for our candidates to not only take McCain's challenge on gun control, but to loudly shame him for his behavior at this terribly sensitive time. Al Gore's call for gun registration cost him votes in rural America in 2000. McCain thinks that our candidates will be afraid to speak out on this issue - and if they are afraid, they will not have an ounce of my respect or support.

In light of what just happened on one of America's college campuses, our Dem candidates' silence or "fuzziness" on the issue wouldn't settle well with my set of values - nor do I suspect it would sit well with most citizens.

I think this is the time for Democrats to come out and shun the politics of old where candidates once were too afraid of being a loser by keeping their intentions silent and failing to speak with strong moral conviction about an issue that most people can be made, with reason, to be convinced to change.

This is another disturbing clip from the South Carolina appearance showing that McCain has too much Walker Texas Ranger attitude, too little concern for the kind of REAL that America so desperately needs to GET! McCain's song is Pander Heaven....: