Here’s one reason why we can’t have a rational discussion about guns in America, even after witnessing mass shootings like those in Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Orlando, Columbine, Virginia Tech and San Bernadino, to name just a few: Politicians love guns. They love them so much that they use them as campaign props. They use them as blatantly obvious metaphors for what they plan to do to regulations and laws they don’t like—especially those rules that would limit access to guns. They pledge allegiance to their gun-lobby donor overlords. And they gleefully fire off weapons of mass destruction in their ads as a way of demonstrating their manliness, their toughness and their take-no-prisoners political attitude. Guns are their political weapons of choice.

The violence — both implicit and explicit — in these ads is astonishing and frightening. They promote culture in which people worship guns, boast about their collections, show off their firepower, and willfully refuse to acknowledge the dangers inherent in widespread, unregulated gun ownership. These ads are about addressing problems not with words, but with bullets and brutality. These politicians have calculated that demonstrating a shoot-first-talk-later [or never] attitude is a winning campaign strategy. And unfortunately, in many cases, they are right.

Clearly, the once-hallowed bully pulpit has given way to the bullet pulpit. That’s why I’m not holding my breath waiting for an honest conversation about ways to reduce gun deaths in America.

Here are some examples. Watch and weep.

Ted Cruz making “machine-gun bacon” [2015]

Will Brooke, candidate for Congress in Alabama, having “some fun” exercising his Second Amendment rights to do some damage to Obamacare [2014], as happy music plays in the background.

Eric Greitens [now Missouri Governor], a “conservative warrior,” is all smiles as he fires a machine gun in this 2016 campaign ad:

Montana’s Greg Gianforte blasts a tv screen [2016]. [This is the guy who later assaulted a reporter, and got elected despite the attack—or possibly because of it.]

It’s not just southern Republicans who do this stuff. Even Jason Kander [a Missouri Democrat who ran for US Senate, whom I generally respect] had to get into the act. He lost to incumbent Republican Senator Roy Blunt, a major recipient of gun-lobby campaign funds. Maybe Kander should have shot the gun, not just assembled it.

Nor is this phenomenon exclusive to men. Here’s Jodi Ernst, now Senator Ernst from Iowa, taking her “shot” in 2014.

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The Republican primary commercials in Missouri are incredible.

Apparently one candidate supports bringing Islamic terrorists to Missouri, because he supported a plan by the mayor of St. Louis (Democrat! Black people live there!) to welcome immigrants from Syria.That candidate, however, clearly knows how to shoot an AK-47.

Another candidate brags about how proud he is that he locked up a child murderer, while his opponent had the nerve to work for a law firm that defended the right of a Muslim to practice his religion in prison.

All of them are TOO LIBERAL FOR MISSOURI!!!!!

Meanwhile, any discussion of important issues in our state? Naaaaah.

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Eric Greitens is blasting his way into the public eye—and not in a good way. Most candidates’ first TV ads are homey affairs, introducing themselves and their all-American families, and focusing on the personal history that drove them to public service. Not so for Greitens. He’s a Republican, running for Governor of Missouri, and his first ad is very different, to say the least.

Watch this, and you’ll see what I’m talking about:

This is what passes for political advertising in 2016. Unfortunately, in gun-loving Missouri, it’s well-targeted. [Missouri’s legislature recently passed a bill making it legal to concealed-carry a gun without a permit. It’s the wild wild west out here.]

Well, at least in his ad, Greitens is not aiming at an image of another politician. But if this is his opening round [pun intended], we can expect a lot more of this macho, gun-totin’ attitude as the August Missouri primary election gets closer. The ad blitz has just begun. Greitens is in a four-way race with some other very aggressive candidates. It’s going to get ugly, and if this ad is an indicator, the ugly is going to be really bad.

PS: This is not an ad created by a PAC that [supposedly] cannot tell the candidate what it’s up to. This ad is funded by Greitens himself. This is who he is and how he chooses to present himself.

And this may only be the beginning:  Greitens has amassed a giant campaign treasury—more than $4 million so far–over half of which comes from donors outside of Missouri. The speculation is that he and his national donors are angling for a shot at the Republican presidential nomination in 2020.

Greitens is locked and loaded. “We don’t need more rhetoric,” he says, in print. But his bang-bang, blow-‘em-up debut ad implies an alternative that is much worse.

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How much does it actually cost to run a political ad on television? We’re about to find out. Until Friday [April 27, 2012], the only way to learn how much a candidate was spending on tv ads was to go to a local television station and request to see something known as the “public files.”  But a new ruling by the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] is changing that process and making the information more accessible to everyone. Under the new ruling, local television stations will be required to post detailed information about political advertising, including the cost of specific commercials, on their websites.

The rule will go into effect 30 days after it’s approved by the Office of Management and Budget, meaning that the public will get at least some information before the November 2012 election. This year, the rule applies only to local affiliates of the top four tv networks–ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC–in the top 50 markets. That’s about 200 stations. Other stations–of which there are about 1,800–will have to comply in two years.

According to Ad Age, the new rule covers about 60% of all expected 2012 political advertising purchased locally or regionally.  Ad buys for 45% of presidential campaign ads would have been disclosed online if the FCC’s new requirement had gone into effect in April 2008.

The ruling is a first,  representing a significant step toward transparency in political campaigns. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has been pushing hard for it since his appointment by President Obama in 2009. Genachowski has been quoted as saying: “The question in front of us is whether, in the 21st century, ‘available for public inspection means stuck in office filing cabinets or available online.”

Love it, somewhat

Campaign finance watchdogs and open-government organizations like the principle behind the new rule, but also point out its limitations.

Think Progress says:”While this additional transparency will not allow citizens to know who is funding shady independent ads, it will at least allow them to track where the spending is going and how much is being spent for each airtime purchase.

The Sunlight Foundation says that the new rule “could provide a crucial source of information about the shadowy groups that can now spend unlimited sums to advocate for or against political candidates without having to register with the FEC.”

But, Sunlight continues,

The proposed rule would also exempt 160 of the country’s 210 television markets, including some in battleground states larley to be targeted for major political ad blitzes…No Spanish language stations would be included in a year when the Hispanic vote is a key demographic likely to be targeted by both parties. …Large areas of some swing states, like Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, could see an influx of advertising in markets outside of the top 50. One state that’s likely to be a key battleground–Iowa–doesn’t have any media that would make the reporting cut.

Hate it, a lot

TV stations don’t like the rule at all. Lobbyists for the broadcasting industry–as well as executives from heavy hitters like Disney, NBC, ABC, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and dozens of local TV news outlets–applied intense pressure on FCC commissioners to vote against the new rule.  They argued that posting ad-buy information would allow “competitors in the market and commercials advertisers to anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data.”

They lost that argument: The FCC commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of the new rule.

But, having lost that argument–at least for now–broadcasters also tried to water down the reporting mechanism, arguing that ad-buy data should be posted only on local affiliates’ websites, not on a centralized FCC database–and only in PDF form, so that the information cannot be aggregated.

There’s no shortage of irony here. ProPublica puts it this way:

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

Along with the ads themselves, this new FCC ruling bears watching.

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