You know who I’m thoroughly sick of hearing about?

Yeah, him. And her, too. And all of them, as well. But that’s not who I’m talking about at the moment.

You know who I am thoroughly sick of hearing about?

Law-Abiding Gun Owners, that’s who.

I know they exist. I even know a few myself. But I am tired of having to buy them all a cookie every time somebody shoots up a school or a church or a country music concert in Las Vegas. I’m tired of taking them into consideration. I have no more room in my consideration for them, their feelings, or their durable outraged innocence. Most of them are very fine people, I’m sure, but they will have to look somewhere else for consideration. There are no more seats left on my Consideration Bus. There are too many coffins onboard these days.

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After every one of these unfortunate exercises of Second Amendment rights in which many people end up dead, I hear about how the great majority of Law-Abiding Gun Owners are as outraged as the rest of us are, and about how we must not do anything about this country’s insane attachment to its firearms that might offends the “millions” of Law-Abiding Gun Owners there are out there.

Many of them, we are told, have no problem with an improved system of background checks. Many of them, we are told, can be convinced on bump stocks and even on some sensible controls regarding the stockpile of weapons of war in private hands. Many of them, we are told, are tired of being represented by the bloody-handed lobbyists and spokesdrones of the National Rifle Association.

My question, as always, is, what’s keeping you?

There never will be a better time for you to make a stand for the sensible gun laws you claim to support. The NRA is on the ropes. Hell, even corporate America is sick of Wayne LaPierre and his vision of America as a dystopian ruin, and corporate America has a very strong stomach for charlatans and crooks—and for dystopian ruins, now that I think about it.

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Some very brave high school students in Florida have given you an opening to use your influence for something other than giving pollsters the right answers over the telephone. There will never be a better time to marshal the strength that people keep telling me you have on the issues that people keep telling me you support.

The NRA and the cowardly politicians who truckle to it are not your friends. They suck up your money and make you afraid and then they and the weapons manufacturers who are the NRA’s only real constituency laugh all the way to the slaughter-pen. Break their power. Support politicians who support the sensible gun laws you say you favor. Vote against the politicians who don't. You have the ability and the credibility to do it. Or don’t ask me to care about you, or to give you unearned consideration. There's no room on the Consideration Bus. Too many coffins to care about.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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