Addendum to "A Modest Proposal": Guns ARE the problem.

In reference to my most recent post, A Modest Proposal, it has come to my attention that many readers are not aware that I was being facetious, and that I am in fact appalled by a government that values the weapons industry over children's lives. It is jaw-droppingly disturbing that the idea of training up child soldiers was not immediately recognized as unthinkable. What a terrible state of the world.

So let me state it for the record: The problem is not mental illness, or even irrational hatred. The problem is guns. Other countries have figured this out, I don't understand why we haven't.

For those interested, this is a remarkably coherent argument made by James Corden about the impact of gun control laws in other countries, including Japan, where not only are there no mass shootings, but there are almost no gun-related deaths.

And this is a link to the original, A Modest Proposal, written by Jonathan Swift in 1729, on which my post was modeled. In it, he suggests reducing poverty and overpopulation in Dublin by eating the babies of the poor. His arguments are so convincing and so skillfully presented that there is an inevitable head-shaking moment when the reader, having been carried along in the wake of his reasoning, suddenly realizes she is witnessing satire, and that Swift is viciously commenting on the appalling dehumanization of the poor.