How come after one guy tries to detonate his own underwear on a transatlantic flight we're all expected to acquiesce to full-body scans at the airport, whereas, after Newtown, when the citizenry overwhelmingly called for reform of our gun laws, the government ultimately decided the most judicious course would be to do nothing? (I also note that the NRA has not launched a massive lobbying effort to follow up on its suggestion about posting armed guards in schools.) Is it just a matter of equipage — that somehow guns, no matter how high-tech and military-grade, are still an all-American product associated with cowboys and gangsters, while even the crudest homemade bombs are considered instruments of war — as Bush et al had it, "weapons of mass destruction"?
