Well, it’s official. The fair state of Utah is infested with Morons. No, not Mormons. Morons, with a capital M.  And here I thought Utah was an anomalous state, filled with ginger-headed polygamists living in red rock compounds with bonneted child brides, but it really is just like the rest of America— which is to say, teeming with gun-crazy morons.

What is worse, many of these morons are serving in the top legislative bodies of our government. The state senate of Utah, exemplary as ever, is thick with them. I think we can fairly gauge the national discourse by the sentiments expressed by Republican state Senator Mark Madsen, regarding yesterday’s final approval of a bill to make the Browning M1911 semi-automatic pistol the “State Firearm” of Utah:

“I think it is a symbol of freedom and empowerment. I think in the balance of history, much more good has been done by free people using firearms than evil done by evildoers wielding firearms,” Madsen said. “I know there is an effort to make it a symbol of negative, I just don’t buy into the propaganda.”

Indeed, let us not overlook the balance of history. Lest we forget the freedom-fighting Spanish conquistadores leveling their muskets at the inhabitants of the New World. Or mercenary soldiers massacring civilians in Central Europe during the Thirty Years War in the name of democracy.  Or the liberty-inspired decimation of the American Indians and Australian aborigines. Or all those freedom-loving wars of imperialism in Africa, India, the Philippines, and Indochina. Or the wholesome slaughter of eight million people during World War One.

Fortunately for historical balance, by 1939, evildoers stopped using guns, which had already become widely known by their truer name: “freedom preservers.” Deterred by the potent democratic symbolism of firearms, Hitler and Stalin instead chose to carry out their treachery with bologna sandwiches and paperback books, a trend that has pretty much stuck, right up through Vietnam and the recent drug cartel killings in Mexico. So, hold on, let me do the math… yep, clearly freedom wins.

But, in case we’re not convinced, listen to fellow Utah senator, Republican Chris Buttars:

“Weapons or guns especially are so demonized by certain elements of our society that I think this adds a real balance… .Weapons in the right hands have probably preserved freedom time and time and time again.”

Not just “time and again,” mind you, but “time and time and time again.” Because, to fully appreciate the freedom-producing powers of handguns, you have to take the longue durée view.

Senator Buttars apparently attended the same history class (and skipped the same introduction to the English language class) as Senator Madsen. The same class, it seems, that all Republicans have attended—the one where you learn to dress up garbage thoughts as a time-honored tradition, turn an enfeebled mind into a symbol of patriotism, and memorize the following rhetorical equation: guns + history /balance = freedom.

Of course, it’s hard to think of the last time I read in the news an account of a freedom-loving citizen with a gun shooting a deranged killer dead in his tracks and preventing a would-be massacre like the one last month in Tuscon. That’s the fantasy—of the armed hero springing into action when evil strikes—that is fueling not only Utah’s crayon-and-drool desire for a state gun but a whole spate of less symbolic and more disturbing legislation around the country.

Texas, Florida, and New Mexico legislatures are considering bills to legalize guns on college campuses, while Nebraska is voting on whether elementary and high school teachers should be authorized to wear concealed weapons in the classroom. Michigan and Iowa are looking to join states like Arizona and Tennessee that allow people to wear concealed or holstered weapons virtually everywhere, even in bars.  Every state but Illinois and Wisconsin has conceal-and-carry allowances, and that looks like it might soon change.

At a time when we urgently need to reflect on our culture’s irrational obsession with guns, our politicians seems to be reacting to the latest tragedy in Tuscon by fleeing into the solace of schlock hero fantasies, as throughout the country they try to re-enact “Die Hard” on the senate floor.

An armed populace of cool-headed, upright John McLains would be one thing. But Americans need to face the fact that they have a high-density population of morons in their midst. Not flat out deranged or malevolent morons, mind you, but those exhibiting the kinds of thought processes that unfold so naturally in the heads of Senators Buttars and Madsen. The kinds of thoughts that make you shudder to know that particular person is carrying a semi-automatic pistol in their holster.

What is to be done? Here, I think the Mormons—not the morons—of Utah can be of service. In past visits to their comely state, I’ve noticed that in restaurants where alcohol is served, a line on the floor separates the safe alcohol-free family atmosphere from the perils of intoxication posed by the “private club.”

I propose we institute a similar law with regard to guns. Let the freedom-loving patriots exercise their distorted constitutional right to feel cold steel on their crotch at all hours of the day, in church, at the bar, in the hospital, on the highway, on the senate floor—just make sure it is on the designated side of a line, partitioned by bullet-proof glass.

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