How is it that we are so afraid of terror attacks and refugees but not afraid of our neighbors (and terrorists) buying guns and dragging them to movie theaters?
Last week, so-called red states - including Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama - wrapped themselves in smugness and declared they wanted no part of Syrian refugees who have fled the violence of ISIS and Syria President Bashar al-Assad. Refugees who undergo two years of vetting just to get in the country - let alone be allowed to buy guns legally.
In the Volunteer State, House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, of Franklin, even called for the Tennessee National Guard to round up Syrian refugees and block new ones.
"I'm concerned about protecting Tennessee lives and preventing another Paris, another Chattanooga," Casada said, likening himself to a modern-day Paul Revere simply "sounding the alarm."
He was alluding to coordinated Islamic State attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead two weeks ago and the July 16 shooting rampage in Chattanooga in which five servicemen were gunned down by 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez.
Meanwhile, Erick Erickson, the editor in chief of the website RedState.com, declared on his website that he won't be going to see the new "Star Wars" movie on opening day, because "there are no metal detectors at American theaters."
Never mind that three theater shootings in as many years in the U.S. have involved only deranged American citizens with guns. Collectively, they killed 16 people and injured more than 80 in Aurora , Colo.; Lafayette, La., and Nashville.
It's important to note here that Tennessee gun deaths in 2013 topped Tennessee traffic deaths: 1,030 gun deaths to 1,027 motor vehicle deaths, according to the Violence Policy Center. Unfortunately, Tennessee is not an outlier. We joined 16 other states with this dubious gun-violence distinction.
Meanwhile, Tennessee deaths due to terrorism total five - five too many - and they happened here in Chattanooga.
But the 1,030 gun deaths are 1,030 too many as well.
Yet Rep. Casada, who has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, voted 31 times in favor of expanding handgun carrying exemptions and other pro-gun legislation, including a yes to allowing guns in parks and a yes to repeal a requirement that gun buyers must complete a firearm transaction thumbprint form. And Casada's answer to what if a child is struck by a stray bullet in a park was that it would simply be "acts of God."
One of the newest dust-ups over the Paris-induced terrorist scare is also about guns - and the NRA.
People on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list often can't board commercial airliners, but they can walk into a gun store and legally buy pistols and powerful, military-style assault rifles.
And they do. According to a March analysis by the Government Accountability Office, people on the FBI's consolidated Terrorist Watchlist successfully passed the background checks required to purchase firearms more than 90 percent of the time, with more than 2,043 approvals between 2004 and 2014.
That means more than 2,000 suspects on the FBI's terrorist watchlist bought weapons in the U.S. over the last 11 years, openly and legally, because Congress and state lawmakers - not the president - helped them to do it.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has reintroduced legislation that would prohibit federally licensed gun dealers from selling firearms to "known and suspected terrorists," but Congress is not likely to pass her bill: The NRA opposes it.
Meanwhile, there have been more than 260 school shootings in the U.S. since the 1999 Columbine massacre. And the rate of people killed by guns in America is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. This year alone 11,868 people in the U.S. were killed in gun violence and another 24,083 were injured.
ISIS has it all wrong. They don't need to be making bombs. They just need to make donations to the NRA and our politicians.