Gun Control

This is turning into a very good month for the worldwide elimination of dangerous, obnoxious assholes.

Riverside, CA  — The day before he allegedly shot his father, the sandy-haired 10-year-old boy showed off a prized possession to a visitor. It was a thin leather belt emblazoned with a silver insignia of the Nazi SS.

“Look what my dad got me,” the boy said shyly, perched on the living room stairs, one of the few quiet spots in a house with five children.

A little more than 12 hours later, the police say, the boy stood near those stairs with a handgun and killed his father, Jeff Hall, as he lay on the living room couch…. The police say that the killing was intentional, but that the motives behind it are still not fully understood.  But whatever the reason, it has cast fresh light on the fringe group to which Mr. Hall devoted his life: the National Socialist Movement, the nation’s largest neo-Nazi party.—NYTimes

Evidently Mr. Hall’s idea of a good time included leading rallies of like-minded solid Americans whose hatred of Jews, Blacks, gay people, and illegal immigrants, etc., inspired them to conduct military-style training in preparation for the establishment  of an Aryan-dominated culture enforced by Nazi devotees.  His message resounded with skinheads, Klansmen, and garden variety extremists who eyed him as a rising star in the crackpot hatred movement (CHM).

We’ve been hearing a lot of chatter lately on the topic of Osama bin Laden’s demise, and how his execution was somehow unwarranted — he should have been captured alive, he was unarmed, his killing amounts to a government-sanctioned assassination, etc.  Stuff and nonsense, of course, but it’s out there for mostly political reasons.  I suspect that there are many more whose sole regret is he wasn’t vivisected and/or fed alive to voracious swine.  This California nut is nowhere the fiend bin Laden was, but his dispatch is more poetic, and somehow more delicious.

The fact is, some people richly deserve to die.  When a gun-crazed, hatred-spewing, dangerous imbecile has his cork popped by his own gun-toting 10-year old son, it’s almost enough to make me reconsider the existence of a god with a sense of humor.  A Divine Joker.

It’s also an opportunity for the NRA to reassert the importance of teaching young children about responsible gun ownership.  Behold their new poster boy, brandishing his still-smoking weapon.  “Guns don’t kill Nazi fathers, their children do!”  I’d hang one in MY family room.  (A poster, not a Nazi.)

One little nagging fact bothers me:

The boy is expected to appear in court later this month; he has been charged as a juvenile with murder, and his public defender said he might plead insanity. The boy and a younger sister had been the subject of a bitter custody battle with Mr. Hall’s first wife, with a series of allegations of abuse on each side. But Mr. Hall had eventually been granted legal custody.

Can a 10-year old even plead insanity?  I hope not on several levels, not the least of which is it would somehow diminish the moral message of the execution.  There’s also that curious passage suggesting that a family court somewhere decided Mr. Hall, the neo-Nazi activist, was awarded custody because he was a better parent and operated a more nurtuing household than Mrs. Hall.  Wonder what she is like?  I bet we find out.

Anyway, two down.  Where’s Daffy Gaddafi?  Better yet, where are his kids?