When you can’t use your mind, you may only act physically.

Guns empower true physical violence, wielded at a distance from the human target, who is unarmed, unsuspecting, innocent, a truly one-sided “fight,” with surprise on the side of the assailant, that reduces his risk of harm.

Guns are easy to get in America no matter how little you know about handling weapons, no matter how unhealthy mentally you may be.

A troubled Iraq vet, Esteban Santiago, 26, upon his return stateside, according to his Aunt, lost his mind in the mid-east and was hospitalized.

Last November, Estaban told the Anchorage FBI that there was a CIA plot against him, and related a tale of paranoia that would be hard to imagine.

Esteban surrendered an ammunition clip to the FBI.  The FBI confiscated his gun.  Esteban was admitted to a hospital.  Shortly afterwards, he was released from the hospital, his gun returned, and Esteban flew from Alaska to Florida, to kill five people with the very same gun the FBI returned to Esteban.

It is not understandable how Esteban could legally carry the weapon and ammunition in his luggage under the plane on the flight to Florida.

It is not understandable how the FBI failed to put Esteban on a watch list.

Of course, in America, you can get a gun if you have a pulse, or someone can get it for you, say, from one of the attendees at a “gun show” from a self-described “collector” – or faux family member – a pistola to slip on the hip.

“Hunters” insist they need an AK47 to shoulder up on a deep forest deer stand in the early morning to bring down a buck.

Meanwhile, Congress fiddles, preferring instead to remove the restrictions on gun silencers, preferred by mob button men, so you won’t hear the gun fire that ends your life; Congress has ironically labeled the bill – the Hearing Protection Act.

I do not go to the stand-alone Purcellville Starbucks anymore (outside Harris Teeter) because that store won’t enforce the parent company’s national policy telling customers not to open carry in their caffeine parlors.

While Esteban killed others, he made sure he lived.

When he spent his ammunition, he lay spread eagle on the ground, and surrendered.

There are plenty of responsible gun owners who would never shoot up an airport or use a weapon irresponsibly but too many of them suffer a paranoia that someone’s coming from the guv’ment, some g-man, to confiscate their guns.

They said President Obama was going to do that, said it for eight years, and he didn’t; yeah, I know, he has about a week – it could still happen; but it won’t.

Post-election America doesn’t trust the facts to make hard decisions.

We should, however reluctantly, take a long look at the death stats from gun violence – so we are not among the lamented or lamenting ourselves.

The agit-prop slogan of many gun owners, illogically afraid “they’re coming for our guns,” is to say “guns don’t kill people.”

All five people in Florida died because of a single gun.

All the people in a comprehensive Washington Post survey died because of guns.

People have and are killing each other and doing it a lot more quickly and definitely with guns.

America does not care to protect the innocent.

We are not providing for the general welfare.

We are surrendering the promise of civilization and the order of law to the arbitrary unskilled impulses of “wild west gun slingers.”

The stranger standing beside you with a firearm on his hip rightly prompts you to be uneasy.

If schools, churches, movie houses, public playgrounds, and airports are not safe, where may you be safe from a stranger with a firearm?

When our elected officials don’t represent us, we have to represent ourselves.

Protest may be the only antidote we have for an infirm government that fails to act.

It’s how we inform our elected officials what’s really needed.