I am already old. I fear that I will never understand some things. Or maybe I do.

Why can virtually any American buy a handgun and why do so many people want to? A handgun is good for one thing and one thing only — killing someone or something at close range. It might be useful for putting a horse with a broken leg out of its misery. Otherwise, the only reasonable use is to kill another person (or oneself).

Handguns are worthless for hunting for the simple reason that almost no one can hit anything at any distance with a handgun. When I was in the army I could hit a man-sized target with an M-16 rifle at distances up to 300 meters. With a .45 caliber handgun I could not hit the same type of target at ten meters when I shot “from the hip” — with the gun at waist level. I was only little more accurate when I was allowed to take careful aim. The rest of the people trying to qualify with the .45 were only a little more accurate.

The officers responding to the shooting at the Empire State Building got off sixteen shots. One of them hit the perpetrator. Here is what CNN reported about the remaining shots:

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the (eleven) bystanders were not hit directly by police, but rather the officers’ struck “flowerpots and other objects around, so … their bullets fragmented and, in essence, that’s what caused the wounds.”

I have personal familiarity with this phenomenon. After I had finished firing my rounds when trying to qualify with the .45, I could see that about half of my bullets had hit the target. Of those, about half were ricochets, which make rectangular holes, rather than direct hits, which make round holes. The sergeant who gave me a passing grade said that I had achieved the required 75 percent mark because “some of those holes look like they have several bullets in them.”

Many people claim that they need their handguns for self-defense. Nonsense. I can understand wanting body armor or Wonder Woman’s bracelets to defend oneself against someone with a gun, but of what use is a gun? Are people planning on shooting the other guy’s bullets in mid-air before they reach them? Or maybe they expect to be able shoot the gun out of the other person’s hand as the Lone Ranger often did on TV in “those thrilling days of yesteryear.” I don’t think so. They either hope to kill the “bad guy” — or maybe deter him.

Some studies have indeed shown that handguns can have a small deterrent effect on crime, but those studies refer to the crime rate, not murder, and they generally refer to gun ownership, not handgun possession. I suppose that a potential victim might conceivably deter a thief, especially an unarmed thief, if the latter knows that the subject has a gun (within reach). No one can convince me that it would deter a murderer with a gun, especially not a psychopath like the guy who shot up the theater showing the Batman movie or the white supremacist who mistook Sikhs for Arabs. All that the gunman needs to do is wait until the subject is within range and then shoot first. I suppose that one could use the “Bungalow Bill” approach — “if looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him” — but shooting first while deferring questions until later is frowned on in many circles. In some states you might even get some prison time.

It is a well established fact that in industrialized countries the murder rate is closely connected to the rate of handgun ownership. The strength of the correlation is so great that it approaches causation.

One other point: Handguns are long and hard, they heat up in your hand, and they ejaculate bullets. Would Freud find it strange that most people who murder with them are frustrated males?

Why are cigarettes legal? I remember reading the Surgeon General’s report on smoking when I was in high school, from which I graduated over forty-six years ago. Why in the world do we still allow anyone to sell products that cause cancer, emphysema, and all kinds of other horrible things and are smelly, useless, and highly addictive to boot? How is it possible that one can still buy these noxious objects almost anywhere?

Not long ago the obvious answer was the tobacco lobby. Now, however, I think that the state governments have become addicted to tobacco sales. In the Land of Steady Habits the cigarette tax is now $3.40 per pack. In the 2010 fiscal year the state took in over $500 million because of cigarette smokers in a time of severe fiscal crisis. If this source of revenue dried up, the crisis would have been much worse.

I don’t care. Tax me. I don’t want my friends and relatives dying from lung cancer.

Why is television so awful? Don’t get me wrong; I do not long for the golden years of TV. American television has always been awful. Temple Houston was no better than American Hoggers. The Monkees won an Emmy in 1967. In the old days, however, there were only three networks. Now there are hundreds. One might suspect that the law of large numbers should now be working for us, but that does not seem to be the case.

I can only remember one program in the last thirty years that excited me, Terry Jones’ four-part series on the Crusades. As I recall it was used to promote the launch of the History Channel, which now is dominated by shows about ghost-hunting and UFO’s. O tempora, o mores!

What is the justification for the Electoral College? Let us pass over without mentioning that it is obviously ridiculous that the three electors from Wyoming represent about 190,000 people each while the ones from California represent over 677,000 people. The biggest problem, to my way of thinking, is that the candidates now concentrate all of their pandering on the so-called swing states. The candidates think that the only state in New England is New Hampshire, and even those who wish to “Live Free or Die” are forgotten after the primary is over.

If there were no Electoral College, everyone’s vote would count the same. Neither candidate could write off a state just because it looked hopeless. The candidates would have to advertise just as heavily in Connecticut as they do in Ohio.

Wait a minute. Forget that I mentioned this one.

Why do we declare war on concepts? First there was the war on poverty, then the war on drugs, and then the war on terror. Use of the word “war” provides cover for politicians because it is considered unpatriotic to question a war no matter how idiotic the justification or how great the cost.

Here is the essence of the problem: When you declare war on a country, the war is over when the country’s government or military leaders surrender. Unfortunately, concepts cannot surrender. A secondary result is that the nation’s leaders tend to employ military tactics and personnel to solve the problem whether they are appropriate or not. The synergy of these two issues is devastating: since a military leader never admits defeat unless there is literally a gun at his head, the “war” can never end!

When the concept is a tactic, the use of the military can obviously be counterproductive. When we bombed Tokyo and Dresden, there was not much resentment outside of Japan and Germany, and the native people were already our enemies. The Chinese, for example, did not wish to join up with the Japanese out of sympathy. In contrast, when we bomb places that hold terrorists in the middle of neutral or allied countries, the families and friends of the dead can easily become angry and resentful enough to join the cause of the terrorists. When the dead people are “collateral damage,” the likelihood is even greater.

Finally, by changing the meaning of words the government opens the door to abuses by other institutions. Putin used the “war on terror” and the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war to justify his crackdown in Chechnya. Funding for the war on terror has apparently become a lucrative profit center for the government of Yemen. The funds will only stop flowing if the government’s anti-terrorism effort succeeds. Can anyone see a potential problem here?

Why are Americans not outraged about preventive detention? I always thought that perhaps the most important principle on which our republic is based was the right to a trial. Surely, this is an inalienable right that is not linked to where we or our parents were born. Indefinite detention of individuals is therefore the most abusive use of governmental power, but its use in Guantanamo (for eleven years!) has generated almost no public outcry whatever. President Obama promised that he would put an end to the practice, but that statement is no longer operative. In plain English it was a lie.

Do people in the United States not know that there are still 197 human beings who, although they have never been charged with a crime, are still being held in Cuba? Or do Americans just not care? I think that it is probably a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” but this might be a result of the high regard that I hold for the moral fiber of my fellow citizens.

It is worth noting that the Obama administration has designated forty-six individuals for “indefinite detention.” I presume this means that they will be held until we win the war on terror or they die, whichever comes first.