t boils down to fear. The core of the dispute about guns is this: Who's afraid of what? Some owners of some of the 250 million guns in America - that's one for every American over the age of about 5, and if you don't have one, someone else has two - are afraid of losing their piece. While the rest of us worry about losing our peace - of mind, and of body.
Not all gun owners are afraid of sensible gun control. Probably only a relative few. By roughly 2-1, the public favors stricter gun laws. But those who fear stronger gun laws respond like frightened puppies to every snarl from the National Rifle Association, arguably the best-oiled lobby in Washington.
Fear is like a spark in the gas tank - all it takes is a little, and BOOM! The NRA is very good at sparking BOOM! in Congress.
A large number of gun owners, as polls reveal, support sensible gun control measures. But the NRA bosses, like the diehard segregationists who shouted ''Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation FOREVER!'' in the '60s, have cast their lot with the never-surrender-nothing crowd.
So the NRA is afraid of gun control, regulation, maybe losing those cushy lobbying jobs in D.C.; and the antigun folks who marched, maybe a million strong Sunday, if you add in all 70 cities, are afraid their kids are going to get plugged.
And the politicians? They're afraid of whichever side turns out the most voters in November.
This is the only industrial country in the world where the gun industry, the fear industry (that's us media folk, in case you haven't figured that out), and the political industry (sad but true, there's money given to politicians to buy votes on gun availability) have conspired to legalize a scale of slaughter that every two years kills more Americans than died in the 10-plus years of Vietnam War combat.
The Centers for Disease Control counted every single gun death in 1997. Incredibly, 32,436 died, all shot, in accidents, suicides, and homicides. That's just under 89 people a day. That's like a big jet plane crash, every single day. Fly NRA Airlines! That's one death every 16 minutes.
You spend an average amount of time reading this paper today, and by the time you put it aside, someone else just got shot dead in America. Bang.
Every day 12 kids are shot, on average, from infancy through the teenage years. That's a Columbine every day. Two kids a day are not even 14. In the three years ending in 1995, about once a year there was a multiple-death school shooting. But from midsummer '95 to '98, there was an average of five per year.
And we're not even counting the Columbine massacre in Colorado.
So influential is the gun lobby in the Republican-controlled Congress and many of the Western and Southern states that Congress refused to pass any post-Columbine gun measure.
That's what spurred the Million Mom March Sunday in Washington and 70 other cities, a phenomenal roar from the grass roots. But the roar came too late for an 18-month-old Holyoke toddler; she was shot Saturday and critically wounded; her father said he was cleaning a handgun when it went off inside the family's western Massachusetts apartment.
Massachusetts, according to the Million Mom March organizers, has the lowest crime rate of any industrial state, and that may partly be due to the fact this is the only state that requires gun licensing and registration.
But across the variegated electoral college terrain, the progun policies of Texas Governor George W. Bush enjoy a slim advantage that is probably illusory. Bush signed a Texas right-to-carry law that could be the subject of a wickedly effective negative ad campaign.
The NRA is portrayed as a lurking menace ready to move into the Oval Office, thanks to a videotaped commercial by Handgun Control showing the No. 2 man in the NRA boasting in a closed meeting how if Bush wins ''we'll have ... a president where we work out of their office.''
Let's hope his aim is as true as his grammar. NRA first vice president Kayne Robinson, next in line behind Gunner-in-chief Charlton Heston, is taped saying that if Bush wins, ''We'll have a Supreme Court that will back us to the hilt.''
I think he meant the scabard, or the holster. Robinson is a GOP operative; his NRA forked over $537,000 in soft money to the Republican Party and none for the Democrats this year and last. The irony is that while Robinson tells the NRA that Bush is their guy, that the gun lobby enjoys ''unbelievably friendly relations'' with Bush, a recent Gallup Poll finds that by 43 percent to 37, the public thinks Bush would do a better job on the gun issue than Gore.
On ABC, Gore tops Bush on the gun handling by 46-38. On CBS, the gun issue finds Bush leads by 10 among men, trails by 5 among women. The presidency and winning the US House may hinge on who rules: men who love their guns, or moms who value kids over weaponry.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
