We’ve all heard the tragic stories about parents who just look away for one distracted second while disaster strikes their helpless toddler. There’s the kid who got into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo, or the children in Texas who drowned while their mother was occupied with her cell phone. When I think about the damage that is being done to our society by the latest evolution of our gun culture, I can sympathize with those parents.

I’m not a gun aficionado, but, for a long time, I felt that 2nd amendment questions about gun ownership weren’t my first priority when it came to political activism – at least not in a society where we have had to fight every day to defend the economic and social progress we made in the 20th century. Social Security, reproductive rights, civil rights for minorities – all came before guns.

Guns, after all, just didn’t seem like that big a deal. When I was a child and we were living in a rural area, my father owned an old shotgun that was kept, unloaded, in the back of a closet. It was only used once that I know of, to stop the suffering of a pet dog that had been too badly badly mauled by coyotes to survive. Later, when we moved to a small city, few, if any, of our urban neighbors had guns, or, if they did, they were securely locked away and nobody thought much about them. So who cared if a few nuts were hot and bothered by the 2nd Amendment? Like those distracted parents, I looked away.

When I looked back again the disastrous view took my breath away. There are more than 300 million guns in circulation – in a country of 300 million people – although only about a third subscribe to gun ownership. In 2015 there were 372 mass shootings (i.e., four or more individuals shot) , which killed 475 people and wounded 1,870. Overall, excluding suicide, 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, and 26,819 people were injured.

And make no mistake, this is an American phenomenon. In the U.S. 60% of all murders in 2015 were the result of gun violence, while only 31% of the murders in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK were attributable to guns. I should add that Canada, Australia and the UK all have strict gun regulations.

Concomitant with America’s gun blood-bath is the rise of what Evan Osnos, a writer for The New Yorker, calls the rise of a “concealed-carry lifestyle,” a phenomenon that leaves me shaking in my (metaphorical) boots:

“Something really profound has changed in the way that we use guns,” Osnos tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “Concealed carry, as it’s known, is now legal in all 50 states.”

Osnos, who writes about the evolution of concealed carry in the current issue of The New Yorker, estimates that there are about 13 million people who are licensed to carry a concealed gun in the United States — more than 12 times the number of police officers and detectives in America.

He says that gun manufacturers market a “concealed-carry lifestyle,” which uses fear to sell guns.

“If you are somebody who is considering buying a gun, or you’ve become part of this phenomenon of carrying a gun in daily life, you are constantly being reminded of ways in which you could encounter a threat,” he says.

This means that anyone in my neighborhood could be packing at any time. Couple this fact with a Missouri law awaiting the Governor’s signature that would extend stand-your-ground, and any paranoid lout or half-drunk old geezer who is offended by the way I allegedly looked at him, by an overheard conversation, by the political signs in my front yard, or just about anything that strikes his or her fevered imagination as threatening, can be inspired to fire off a few rounds in my direction. The possibilities opened up by concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws do not make me feel safe. They make me instead think about getting out of Dodge.

In his New Yorker article, Osnos describes how, in the interest of increased sales, the NRA uses racially-tinged fear of crime and populist fears that “powerful Americans are seeking to disarm and endanger less privileged citizens” to whip up the paranoia that fuels gun fervor. And to support this union of fear and guns, the NRA regularly pays off pet politicians. Politicians like Missouri’s Senator Roy Blunt:

Since 1998, no current member of Congress has accepted more in campaign donations from the National Rifle Association than Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt. A new analysis this week from The Washington Post, and highlighted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed that Blunt has received $60,550 from the NRA.

Go ahead. Guess where Blunt has come down on all the recent efforts to keep military assault weapons out of the hands of civilians – including suspected terrorists.

To be fair, Blunt did vote for two GOP-sponsored amendments that pretended to keep suspected terrorists from buying guns while doing nothing or even, according to some calculations, making the gun situation worse. Nothing like pretend government. Maybe Missourians should all just pretend to vote for Blunt next November.

Rep. Sam Graves (R-6) has always struck me as a typical 21st century Missouri GOP pol: for limited government except when he isn’t, opposes government handouts except for his friends, willing to toe the accepted rightwing rhetorical line no matter how absurd, and rarely if ever challenges party leadership. The archetypical “Fox” Republican, as he has been dubbed, he chairs the House Small Business Committee where he’s a predictable quantity, opposing what he terms “handouts,” taxes, and business regulation. As you might guess, he’s approved of by conservative groups like the Chamber of Commerce although spokesmen for more pragmatic business organizations have suggested that he “often puts ideology over the practical needs of small businesses,” as when he opposed the $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF).

My impression of Graves has been that in general while there’s lots to dislike, there’s little of real substance in the tired boiler-plate he dishes out – although he did hint at a proclivity toward the more exotic forms of GOP ideology back in 2002 when he took on some teenagers in Blue Springs, Missouri, gifting the city with a a $273,000 grant to fight “Goth culture.” Not surprisingly, at least half the amount was later returned “because of a lack of interest — and the absence of a real problem.”

All of which left me a little flummoxed when I read today that Graves has taken on the role of a GOP David and aimed his slingshot at the rightwing’s favorite Goliath, the EPA:

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would halt all EPA rules that are currently in the works and prompt a review of all previous EPA regulations. H.R. 5034, titled the Stop the EPA Act, would also require Congress to approve all previous and new regulations that cost $50 million or more. Under the bill, any that aren’t approved by Congress won’t become law.

“My legislation will give the American people a voice in the regulator’s room when the President and the EPA try and go around Congress,” Graves said in a statement. “EPA aggression has reached an all-time high, and now it must be stopped.”

Graves’ legislation was prompted by the EPA’s “Waters of the United States” proposal, which aims to clarify what streams and rivers are under the jurisdiction of the federal government, under the Clean Water Act. It’s also aimed at the EPA’s new rule on carbon emissions from power plants, a proposal that multiple other lawmakers have attempted to undermine or overturn in recent months. House Republicans introduced an EPA funding bill this week that would block the agency’s new power plant rule, and nine states have signed on to coal company Murray Energy’s lawsuit against the agency, claiming that the new rule constitutes EPA overreach.    

The claims Graves and comperes put forward about EPA overreach have been well refuted elsewhere – they’re patently false (see also here (pdf)). Worse, we’ve heard the same story over and over before. For example, as Think Progress points out, almost the same rhetoric was used in the GOP-led struggle to undo regulation of the lethally dangerous asbestos industry.

One commentator pointed out that Graves timed his new legislation to coincide with a Missouri visit by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, which he noted with lots of heroic chest-thumping and territorial gibbering on his Website. Which leads me to ask: does this new, aggressive Sam Graves have anything to do with the upcoming August Primary? Not only has Graves’ district grown considerably in the wake of redistricting, incorporating new voters – it now takes in the entire Northern section of the state, including the Northeastern areas previously represented by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) – he also has three primary challengers, at least two of whom, Brian Tharp and Christopher Ryan, seem to  coming after his right flank, which, no matter how haltingly they may be limping toward it, has to resonate somewhat in these days after the fall of Eric Cantor. How better to show up your GOP opponents than to launch a few stones, no matter how feeble, at the heart of the GOP’s favorite regulatory beast.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  It occurs to me that Blaine Luetkemeyer actually established himself in his erstwhile Northeast district through lots of shrill anti-EPA rhetoric and climate change denialism. Seems to have gone over big with the Farm Bureau types up there. Think Sam wants the big-ag folks to know he’s a real Luektemeyer soul brother?