A couple weeks ago, in a sleepy hilltop hamlet, (Pie Town, New Mexico), I was served a slice of pretty good pie by a big white dude packing a gun. Forty-something, 6’2″ or taller and weighing at least 250, I kinda had to wonder what exactly he was so afraid of that he needed a revolver ready on his hip to serve … pie and coffee to tourists?

In our now thoroughly-ritualized reaction to what have become daily mass shootings in the USA, (literally, folks), we hear the same exasperated demands for Congress to “do something”. “Exasperated” because we know with absolute certainty that Congress will do nothing, because Mitch McConnell will not allow Congress to do anything.

When the net result of a guy killing 20 grade-schoolers and six teachers was states and McConnell’s Congress further relaxing gun laws, we all know we’re living in a bizarro world where quaint notions like majority rule and common decency carry no weight.

“What to do” about America’s gun-worshipping insanity has never been too difficult. There is no end of ideas, ranging from the modest — “red flags” allowing judges to confiscate guns from certifiable crazies — to the definitive — making private gun ownership illegal. Given a Congress — and a state poitical environment — that actually represented the thinking of the majority, something would have been done long before this. But we aren’t living in that world.

One of the ideas that keeps rattling around my alleged brain is a television campaign describing gun owners … to themselves and their neighbors. Think of billionaire Tom Steyer’s PSA avalanche demanding Trump’s impeachment. Then redirect that to a series of deadly serious but also semi-comic ads spotlighting the painfully obvious racial, sexual and gender issues motivating “gun enthusiasts”.

I don’t anything about the big pie guy’s fear factor, but I do know our up north neighbor, who I’ll call “Steve”. He’s lived his entire life 20 miles from town, out in the woods along your classic burbling creek. Peace, quiet and fresh air. He worked construction until he retired (union pension) and was without question a devoted caregiver to his invalid wife for 15 years before she passed away.

But as his retirement years have gone on his sense of threat and vulnerability has steadiy increased, to the point that now, even while walking his dog through the woods, he packs a gun. Shooting, in fact, is his default activity. It’s his primary social recreation with his backwoods pals.

Steve’s the kind of guy who regularly drops the line, “Now, I’m not prejudiced … ,” as a starter to a conversation about some black guy’s mug shot he’s seen on the evening news. Not to mention his “this proves what I’m saying” riff on three black guys he saw in line at the Walgreen’s pharmacy down there in town.

Now mind you, in the 25 years we’ve had a place near Steve, nothing has ever happened. A window was broken once 20 years ago, but nothing was stolen. The biggest threat to anyone’s life and limb are the occasional drunks — all of them local and white — careening up and down the highways and gravel roads.

Point being, Steve embodies everything we understand about conservative rural America.

Fear of some relatively high degree is what kept them within miles of where they were born. Hence, they’ve had no real, routine person-to-person interaction with blacks and other minorities — other than what they see on television, TV being their primary if not sole source of news, just as pulp entertainment has informed their role-modeling since they were children.

Then you compound all those anxieties with the physical deterioration and sense of vulnerability that comes with age. The result is a profoundly fear-based psychology for which a relatively inexpensive arsenal of guns salves almost all their wounds. Several of Steve’s buddies have upgraded their “collection” to include AR-15s, “an AR” in the vernacular. Steve may have, too. I don’t know.

The time came long, long ago when responsible politicians and media “leaders” needed to not only call white nationalist terrorism “terrorism”, but lay out for the public what so many reputable studies have shown about the roots of some people’s affinity for guns. And it ain’t video games.

As this study shows, racial animus is umbilically linked to gun ownership, certainly gun fetishism. Then there’s the virility surrogate effect of weaponry and the status-enhancing/rejuvenating effect that comes with gun ownership. And, as we’ve seen with the explosion of the internet, the powerful “community” effect on people who for whatever reason — lives lived apart from urban-style diversity or this bizarre INCEL culture — feel psychologically isolated and rejected.

A prime TV campaign featuring the science of gun affinity as well as the rancid money game behind the manufacturers, the NRA and the Russians would at least spark a different conversation, one that America’s conservative thought leaders — the hosts of “Fox & Friends” and Rush Limbaugh — would have to respond to.

Or we can express “thoughts and prayers” that Kentucky’s rural militia will rise up and vote Mitch McConnell out of office next year.