Enough is enough.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - On gun control - Column

Thirty-two years ago, in a classic piece of gonzo journalism, Bill Lueders--then an intern at The Progressive, now associate editor--demonstrated how ridiculously easy it was for an inebriated goofball in a Chairman Mao cap to buy a gun. (We reposted Bill's piece recently on our website.)

For this issue of the magazine, Bill joined writer Nathan Comp and hit the trail again--driving a truck through the "gun show loophole" to file a report on the current state of America's paranoid gun culture.

That story is part of our Gun Show Nation cover package, along with Sharon Johnson's crucial update on state-based efforts to regulate guns.

Longtime Progressive contributor and disability rights activist Mike Ervin adds an important perspective on how the Obama Administration is going after the wrong target--adding to its background check database people who have mental disabilities but pose no threat to public safety.

We don't need more government surveillance of people who get extra help managing their government disability payments. We need to get a handle on the proliferation of dangerous guns.

Readers all over the country contributed to our campaign to raise money for our crucial reporting in this issue on guns. If you were one of them, thank you!

As I write this, I have just returned, late, from dropping off my daughter at high school. We kept her home this morning to talk over a threatening message scrawled on a bathroom wall at school, warning students that there would be a shooting today. (The student who wrote the message was discovered, claimed it was a joke, and the school day went on as usual.) This sort of thing is so commonplace lately, it barely turns heads.

In February, the Republican presidential candidates held a debate the night after a terrible gun massacre in Kansas and didn't even consider it worth mentioning.

In Washington, DC, people have all but given up on serious gun safety legislation. But, as Johnson points out, that doesn't mean citizens have grown...