Written by Thomas Magstadt   

Anybody eager to gain a better understanding of the corruption that pervades politics in the nation's capital, the origins of the super-charged gun culture that has emerged in the post-Reagan era, and the relationship between the two can do no better than to read Richard Painter's article in the New York Times ("The NRA Protection Racket" on Dec. 20, 2012).*

Painter captures an essential feature of the political landscape today. He writes, "The most blatant protection racket is orchestrated by the National Rifle Association, which is ruthless against candidates who are tempted to stray from its view that all gun regulations are pure evil."

Political theorists have devoted reams of paper to the problem of "dirty hands." Basically, it involves the dilemma politicians face when confronted with a necessity to act in situations where the moral stakes and consequences of action (or inaction) are ambiguous, uncertain, or unknown. When there is no good choice unencumbered by the likelihood of "collateral damage," or where choosing between the lesser of two evils is unavoidable, the problem becomes endemic to the very process and project of politics among their self-interest and the exogenous political pressures.

As Painter's article makes clear, the problem of "dirty hands" can now more accurately to be viewed as a problem of "bloody hands". Politicians who have climbed into bed with the gun lobby, who have turned the once-respectable Republican party into the political wing of the NRA, and who manifestly care much more about not getting targeted for defeat in the next election than about the safety of our citizens – including schoolchildren – who are literally the targets of gun-crazy lunatics armed with lethal semiautomatic weapons designed to massacre people, not to hunt elk – such politicians are not just corrupt, they don't just have dirty hands.

By refusing to take ANY action to counteract the rising gun culture and attenuate the rate of violent crime, Congress aided and abetted the Columbine killers, the Virginia Tech, Aurora and Newtown shooters, and the other mass murderers whose names are quickly forgotten but whose victims aren't.

No one knows why the Newtown shooter decided to go on a rampage at an elementary school on that terrible day. There can be no justification but there's never a lack of exploitation. The media hang crepe, play maudlin music, and talking heads ask unending questions that run the gamut from profound to pointless. And nothing changes.

Guns sales typically surge in the wake of these mass-murder media events. There will be millions more guns in America 2013 than there were in 2012. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker ("The Simple Truth About Gun Control", 12/20/2012) offers these sickening statistics: "Five thousand seven hundred and forty children and teens died from gunfire in the United States, just in 2008 and 2009. Twenty more, including Olivia Engel, who was seven, and Jesse Lewis, who was six, were killed just last week."

Make no mistake. The problem is not the existence of guns. Guns have been around at least since the 13th century and gunpowder even longer. America's gun culture is the problem. It is unique to this country, a mass disorder not found anywhere else in the civilized world.

It's not a problem without a solution. We know how to fix it, but it will take time and if we don't start now, after the Newtown atrocity, when? The Second Amendment does not stand in the way. The fictive "fiscal cliff" is irrelevant. It doesn't take a massive new spending program to do it. What it takes is a Congress with a conscience.

Dirt washes off. Blood stains.

This article was originally published at NationofChange. http://www.nationofchange.org/note-congress-dirt-washes-blood-stains-1356187244. All rights are reserved.