The Cruelest MonthAnother lethal April, another failure to ask why.

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Richard Poplawski—the Pittsburgh cop killer—was quite clear about what inspired his killing spree. He feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (His aunt, Marianne Klimczyk, told reporters that his machine gun, rifles, and handguns were "recreational and for deer hunting.") Jiverly Wong, the Binghamton killer, cheerfully told a co-worker before the election that he'd shoot either Obama or McCain. And Jim David Adkisson left a four-page manifesto explaining precisely why he opened fire inside a Knoxville, Tenn., church last year: "This was a hate crime," he wrote. He simply wanted to kill the "generals" of the liberal movement: "Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate and House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me."

Nobody has taken responsibility for the content of the books, blogs, and news clips that contributed to the paranoid and violent views of these killers. And why would they? Books and newscasts don't kill people. People kill people.

Nor do the constant drumbeats about the president's anti-gun, anti-freedom, New World Order agenda fuel merely the suicidal, the psychotic, and the sociopathic. The Christian Science Monitor reports this week that Main Street America is on a "massive gun-and-ammunition buying spree" that has left gun shops short on assault-style weapons and ammunition. Those hoarding guns and ammunition share Poplawski's fear of Obama's (nonexistent) gun control initiative as well as the belief that America is facing a (nonexistent) crime wave. Never mind FBI numbers—cited in the same story—that reflect a decline in crime. As Tom Lee, a member of the Virginia Citizen Militia, explains to the Christian Science Monitor: "People are seeing a looming economic collapse that will lead to a prolonged and possibly worsening breakdown of law and order and, eventually, a We-the-People vs. armed-government-enforcers scenario."

The right wing has lost its mind today over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security warning of a surge in "rightwing extremist activity" and a danger of increased militia activity. As Glenn Greenwald notes, it's a little late for their tears on the privacy front. But as the far right worries that the president's storm troopers might trample their petunia beds, it's silent on the question of whether a nation full of disaffected, frightened, and rage-filled citizens should be packing heat.

And where is the Obama administration in all this? Obama has been kinder to the Second Amendment than most of his Democratic predecessors. He has said that he believes in the Second Amendment right to own a gun, "subject to reasonable regulations," and claims to want only modest gun control measures. When his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the Binghamton and Pittsburgh killings and what the administration's plans were to confront gun violence, Gibbs said something about how great it was that "the Recovery Act put more police officers on the street to keep us safe." The administration hasn't even been clear about whether it intends to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired under President Bush. What's Obama to do? Sixty-five Democrats in the House of Representatives have asked him not to push for the assault weapons ban.

The extreme hysteria that surrounds discussions of gun control leads to absurd arguments about causation. Nobody claims that Glenn Beck is responsible for killing people. Nobody thinks guns are inherently evil. But how can there be an honest national debate over gun violence if we cannot even acknowledge the connections between people who admonish us to become "armed and dangerous" and a citizen's decision to arm himself and kill? Our annual April shooting sprees have many complicated causes, and no single factor is fully to blame. But it's willful blindness to fail to see any connections between the rising number of guns in America, the decline in gun regulation, and the screaming nightly predictions about the rise of an apocalyptic totalitarian police state. Until we can recognize that these connections exist, there will be more killings in the coming weeks and years. You bring the candles. I'll bring the teddy bears.

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