There was mass carnage yesterday on the Venice Beach boardwalk near LA when a man used his high-powered automobile to run over 12 people – killing one of them and sending the remainder to the hospital.

News story here:

The black car – a menacing color typically favored by the military – was used by a young man in his 20s – probably a loner. He may have bought the car without a background check, since these are not mandatory in California.

Anyone can just go out and buy a car “under the table” – from an unlicensed seller. There are no laws requiring that high-powered cars be kept securely stored, with their ignitions disabled or locked so that unauthorized people can’t just jump in and go. These cars have high-capacity fuel tanks – and can be driven for miles and at high speeds… . Most are fully automatic, too.

Perhaps this is why so many innocent people are harmed – and killed – by high-powered cars in the United States every year.The death toll is in the tens of thousands annually – a tsunami of blood and guts compared with the dozen or so mass shootings that have taken place during the past several years. Why, not a day goes by without children being killed by high-powered cars.

And not just high-powered cars, either. What about all those Saturday Night Specials? You know – hoopties people buy for just a few hundred bucks?

Often, with cash?

They are prone to misfiring – or may accelerate unintentionally (this has apparently happened with new cars, too). Sometimes, they can’t stop – because the brakes aren’t working.

Strangely, there have been no calls for an immediate ban on the sale of high-powered, menacing-looking automobiles. Nor a ban on Hoopties. No calls for reasonable background checks. No demand that drivers be trained and demonstrate competence behind the wheel.

Merely that they pay a fee.

Where is Mothers Against Hemi Chryslers? Where is President Obama? Mayor Bloomberg? Diane Feinstein?

Don’t they care?

“We” need sensible car control!

No?

Could it be because unlike guns – which many people (especially the people who want to ban them) don’t possess themselves – cars are a familiar tool used by just about everyone? Because it’s understood that most people handle their vehicles responsibly (or at least, not murderously) and that it would be inconvenient to ban all cars – or hamstring their use to such an extent that most people – including the suburbanites who favor “sensible” gun control – would be unable to drive themselves around or unwilling to endure the hassles involved in order to be allowed to do so?

Yet if injury/death is the criteria for banning a given tool, then cars should be at the very top of the list – and many rungs higher than firearms. The average person is far more likely to be injured or killed by a car (or a table saw, probably) than by a gun. In fact, “gun violence” continues to decrease as the number of guns in circulation continues to increase – while the opposite is true of cars.

None of this is new information.

Neither is the agenda-driven hypocrisy of the Clovers pushing for gun control – who are typically in way over their heads as far as their own abilities (and judgment) when behind the wheel of a car.

These are not principled people looking for solutions – such as expecting individual people to behave responsibly, hold them accountable when they don’t – and leave everyone else the hell alone.

They are demagogues who bank on fear – and the thoughtlessness of the boobs they manipulate. The soccer mom who blows through a red light she didn’t see because she was babbling away on her cell phone does not consider her SmooVee a dangerous implement – nor herself as someone in need of being “controlled.” But she’ll freak out if she spots a peaceful citizen who hasn’t done anything to anyone open carrying, call 911 hysterically – and write even more hysterical letters-to-the-editor demanding something be done.

To someone else, of course.

To someone she doesn’t like.

Based on her feelings.

Not the actions of her intended victim.

This is characteristic of Clovers. A toxic emulsion of subjectivism, arbitrariness, group-guilting and control freakery percolated in seventh-grade emotionalism – distilled with 190 proof hysteria.

There is no reasoning with such people.

You’d have better luck trying to out-quack a duck.

Throw it in the Woods?