I don’t fancy myself a professional journalist, despite insistence to the contrary from my lovely emperor-in-chief on the other page. Swanky job title and newspaper section notwithstanding, I have hang-ups with taking on such a label when “mass media” comes off the tips of tongues as a pejorative term.

The instantaneous, on-demand nonsense permeating our daily lives in the form of smart phones and social media is precisely why I dread wasting $80 of my meager salary on the colonic Sprint passes off as “phone service.”

I don’t read, hear or see the news, just a barrage of sensationalism and hyperbole. We’ve devolved to the point where information and poignancy take the backseat, with hysteria taking the wheel and theatrics riding shotgun.

With the breaking news of the Tuscon tragedy came the instantaneous calls for legislative intervention. The requisite ‘experts’ representing the extremes of both ideologies are busy making their rounds, paid to spout whatever garbage suits whatever special interest group funds their spectacle.

Now, you have folks vehemently opposed to the very existence of firearms introducing all sorts of ham-handed legislative “bans” on scapegoat weaponry, while simultaneously pontificating on national television that they’ve never owned, fired or even held the very weapons to which they’re so opposed.

I’ll spare you the gritty details regarding the hours of research I did on the Clinton-era weapons ban, and be completely comfortable in printing the following statement: It didn’t work. After a very, very modest drop the year the legislation was introduced, 1994, the number of firearm-related fatalities, statistically, didn’t budge.

Mouths have indeed been a-flappin’ this past week about the need to re-instate the federal assault weapons ban, despite a precedence of failed attempts since 2004. It was that year the Senate voted down re-incorporation of the ban in an 8-90 vote. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy was adamant about the re-authorization of the ban in wake of the Virginia Tech shooting. I didn’t bother digging up just how soundly her efforts were defeated, but there was a bit of a stir caused after Tucker Carlson pointed out to Ms. McCarthy on prime time television that the ‘high-capacity ammunition clip’ she so emphatically opposed weren’t used in the shootings to begin with.

Yet here we are, a week after a tragedy instigated by a man who, not to mince words, was a complete lunatic, and I can’t get on Facebook without five of my lefty friends calling for an all-out ban on firearms in my mini feed.

This is a slippery slope, ladies and gentlemen. The NHSTA said there were 38,648 automobile fatalities in 2006. In that same year, the FBI reported 30,896 deaths via firearm; 12,793 of which were homicides and 16,883 suicides.

Here’s the part where I make my Rube Goldberg argument: Cars killed far more people than handguns. A 2,000-pound vehicle traveling at 55 mph does this trick just as well as the 8-gram bullet going 830 mph. As a society, we get a bit liberal with whom we allow to drive, and anyone who begs to differ should try taking a jaunt down I-35 during the next blizzard.

Without guns, we wouldn’t have handgun homicides. Without cars, there would never be another drunk driving fatality.

I err on the side of lax gun laws. I’d rather give people the luxury, and ability, of defending their homes and livelihoods. I’m not the guy who’s going to sit here proselytizing on the dangers of weapons and the adequacy of the police forces.

Legislative bans designed to impede or avert a situation that can only exist after a sequence of catastrophic failures resulting in a worst-case scenario have rationale every bit as thin as the paper it’s printed on.

Banning firearms seems like an easy solution to an infinitely complex problem.

If only life were so simple.