My dear friend and mentor, Cliff Schecter, has a weekly column; hence, because Cliff has given me permission to share his work with you, I’ll give you the latest edition of what I call Cliff Notes.

He skewers better than a chef at Smokey Joe’s BBQ. He has comedic insights that rival those of our mutual friend, the hilarious Lizz Winstead. He’s sharper than the point on Sarah Palin’s pin head.

Here are a few excerpts from his latest, with permission. Please read the whole thing, because he has way more than I’ve included here:

Columbus, OH - It happened again recently. We don’t know all the details, but what we do know is this. A young man named TJ Lane walked into high school – here in my home state of Ohio – approached a table full of kids and started shooting.

By the time the smoke cleared, three kids were dead. [...]

His parents, both charged with domestic abuse and other violent behaviour in the past, seemingly helped nurture a disturbed and dangerous kid.

But it’s also been reported that the killer’s grandfather – from whom Lane accessed the gun used – had so many weapons lying around that he couldn’t figure out a gun was missing until afterwards. Read that sentence again.

Teaching a child that violence solves everything and giving him access to an arsenal. That should make his family criminally liable [...]

Because, make no mistake, it’s a love affair with guns by an obsessive and loud minority and the resulting lax regulation, which are key reasons these things just don’t happen on a regular basis in any other Western country. [...]

I have a question I’d like to proffer to the arms-dealer lobby, also known as The National Rifle Association (NRA). Not their members, who strongly support common-sense gun control measures, unless you want to disbelieve numerous polls (part of a Bilderberg conspiracy of yet-unknown proportions), including one by died-in-the-wool Republican Frank Luntz. But their leadership, who Lawrence O’Donnell Jr rightly called“the merchants of death”.

At what point does this senseless violence (not to mention man-on-gun love) become simply unacceptable? [...]

When do we look at the recent Today Show gun sting and say it’s probably a bad idea to allow anyone – and by that I mean, you, me or the Unabomber – to buy weaponry that can pierce armour or take down a helicopter without a background check? [...]

Regarding our politicians and the need for first-world gun regulations like background checks – an issue on which I have worked the past few years – I give you a recent study by scholar Paul Waldman. Waldman’s work took apart long-held myths, like that the NRA’s money and endorsement impacts elections (the NRA endorses all-but-certain winners and spreads its money too thin for any measurable impact in a given race) and that they were responsible for the national Republican victories in 1994 and 2000 (hint: they weren’t). [...]

There will be more victims like those in Chardon. But a combination of activism by survivors, reports like Waldman’s and demographics will not be kind to the gun industry in the coming years.  [...]

Happiness is not a warm gun.

Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, and the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain.

Follow him on Twitter: @Cliffschecter