JANE STILLWATER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Recent ad insert in Sacramento Bee. (Photo: BuzzFlash)

There was a gun show in San Francisco last weekend and hundreds of people were already lined up at the door and waiting, hours ahead of the opening bell. Why? "We want to buy guns, of course, but we also want to buy ammunition." Of course. What is the use of having a gun if you don't have any ammunition?



And what is the use of buying just one gun when you can buy two? Or three or four -- or a hundred.

And what is the use of owning a derringer when you can own a pistol? And why own a pistol when you can easily trade up and buy a semiautomatic weapon instead? And why just have aay semiautomatic weapon when you can get your hands on an AK-47 and illegally convert into essentially a machine gun? Or obtain a rocket-launcher one way or the other -- better yet!



I just finished reading Henry Chang's excellent new murder-mystery novel, "Death Money" And on page 67, Chang wrote, "[Detective Yu] had considered switching over to a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, a nine-millimeter piece, with a polymer frame and a fifteen-shot magazine, but most cops were favoring the new Glocks." And the more that the bad guys on his beat increased their firepower, the more that Detective Yu wanted to up his firepower too.



And Detective Yu's attitude is the norm among real cops as well as fictional ones. And it's not just him or most cops that think this way either. In fact, the more firepower almost anyone has, then the more firepower almost everyone wants. This is true. And pretty soon, even a rocket-launcher won't do the job and we will all be wanting to upgrade to bazookas and tanks. And then cannons. And drones. And who knows what all else.



"They've got one. I need one."



Pretty soon, if America's current trend toward weaponization keeps spiraling upward, then who knows. We'll all be walking down Main Street locked and loaded like ISIS does in Iraq. And we'll all be wearing black scarves wrapped around our heads and carrying pirate flags and ranting about law and order and God and shooting down everything that moves -- ISIS-Al Qaeda-Taliban style.



And gun manufacturers will be happily raking in big bucks all this time -- that is, until all of their customers end up shooting all of their other customers dead.

