Ryan Costello, the GOP
congressman from our district in Chester County, PA, looks like one of those farm
implement or panty-hose execs used to comic effect in so many episodes of Mad Men. But when he’s not channeling
the late 1950s-early ‘60s fashion sense of mainstreet Midwest, he’s an active
puppet for the NRA, having received $9,900 thus far from the folks who brought
you Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Virginia Tech and literally hundreds of other
nightly news horror shows.
Some pols got a lot more –
by US electoral standards, Costello’s a cheap example of the world’s oldest
profession – and quite a few have gotten less. But he’s what you get when Dems
don’t turn out in off-year elections. And he’s precisely the kind of pol who
convinces people that government is hopeless, useless and corrupt.
But the biggest con of all
here is not all the little congressmen who do the bidding of the gun lobby, but
the NRA itself. The idea that the NRA
represents gun owners is a total fabrication. It represents gun and
ammunition manufacturers. Plenty
of polls have shown that NRA members support rational constraints on gun sales
and ownership. They don’t benefit from mass murders and the 30,000+ Americans
who die by gun violence every year. The only folks who do are the
manufacturers. They are the problem. Time to focus on them.
