THIS Is CNN?

Wow. Just wow. Maybe we are winning after all...

Add this to Utah's list of state symbols: an official firearm

(CNN) -- Until this week, Utah had 24 state symbols, from tree (the blue spruce) to insect (the honeybee) to even cooking pot (the Dutch oven).

Now it's added an official state firearm -- the John M. Browning-designed M1911 pistol, becoming the first state in the nation to have one, according to the state legislator who sponsored the law.

CNN is reporting on Utah's decision to honor local boy made good John Moses Browning (PBUH) by making his 1911 design the official state firearm. That is, quite simply, astonishing. This is the same CNN that ran breathless videos in 2004 claiming that the Assault Weapons Ban expiring that year would result in machine guns flooding the street.

Oh, wait, here's the PSH:

Other critics have said the new state symbol implicitly condones gun violence.

So an inanimate object "condones [inanimate object] violence"? My good friend Weerd Beard has been maintaining an ongoing collection of stories of people killed by means other than firearms. Folks, we need to say it again, apparently. Let me run pictures:

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This:



is not a symbol of obesity;

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This:



is not a symbol of drunk driving;

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And this:



is not a symbol of abuse.

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It's the person misusing the symbol that's the issue. Always has been, always will be. Outlaw guns and the goblins will use knives. Outlaw knives and the goblins will use bats or sticks. Going after the inanimate object used rather than the person responsible - and the underlying socio-economical troubles that precede such incidents - is short-sighted and doomed to fail.

Unless, of course, like the Assault Weapons Ban, the legislation is aimed not at reducing crime but at increasing control, that is...

That is all.