Shots in the dark

 He must get tired of doing it. He must get tired of having to do it.

Yet there Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was again last night, lamenting another mass shooting, this one right down the street from where his Warriors were playing the Kings in Sacramento. Kings coach Alvin Gentry, weighed in, too. There would be a moment of silence before the game.

Kerr appreciated that and felt rich disgust about it at the same time.

"I'll be honest, this is my ninth or 10th moment of silence that I will have experienced as head coach of the Warriors when we mourn the losses of people who have died in mass shootings," he said. "I don't think moments of silence are going to do anything."

No, they won't. I don't think anything will. In America, it's a shot in the dark to try and stop shots in the dark.

Those shots in the dark left six more people dead and 10 wounded after some crazy opened fire outside a Sacramento nightclub in the skinny hours Sunday morning, A couple hours before, at an outdoor concert in Dallas, one person died and at least 11 were wounded when more crazy people opened fire.

It was the second mass shooting in Dallas in two weeks. Yee-ha.

Meanwhile America shrugs and keeps electing the government we deserve.

Meanwhile Steve Kerr -- whose father was murdered by a gunman in 1984, and so has earned every right to speak out on the subject -- will probably be told to shut up and dribble by the usual suspects.

Meanwhile those same usual suspects will haul out the same tired bromides about the Second Amendment and freeee-dom and the Second Amendment and also the Second Amendment, which has been stretched so far beyond the founders' intent it's unrecognizable.

"If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns!" someone will say, even though no one worth listening to is advocating outlawing guns or ever has.

"Obama is coming for our guns!" they said back in the day, missing the irony while they freely bought a sixth or seventh semi-auto because, you know, you can never have too many.

"More background checks won't stop gun violence!" they'll say now, although who knows how much has been stopped already because we'll never read about the shootings that didn't happen.

Look. I'm no fringe lefty when it comes to firearms. My dad was a gun collector, so I grew up in a house full of them. His brother was an avid hunter and sport shooter. Both were members of the NRA, until my dad quit when he figured out they weren't there to advocate for hunters and sport shooters, but were funded mainly by the gun industry as its lobbying arm.

It's why the NRA, after yet another mass shooting, says the only way to stop it is if more people buy more guns. 

I'm not anti-gun. I'm anti-obsession with guns, which they've become among some politicians of a certain lean. I've also accepted the fact this obsession is never going to go away no matter how many schoolkids or parishioners or concert goers die because of it.

This is America, and this is who we are. It's who we want to be, apparently. We're the Wild West we always read about but never really were, because even in the Wild West there were ordinances in some towns requiring visitors to leave their firearms at the city limits.

Today some towns actually have tried (unsuccessfully, but still) passing ordinances requiring gun ownership.

Yee-ha.