Our discussions about gun control go nowhere, so let’s talk about this.

A flamethrower and a BIG ol’ tank of gasoline: What could possibly go wrong?

“You might ast yerself, what is this? Well, ah’m ‘one tell ya. This, my friends, is what dreams are made of,” says the crusty, country-fried Santa in the video above. “Look at that, would ya. Heh-heh, ha-HAAAH! Ah’m talkin’ ’bout get some fer sure. Guys, this is a XM42 personal flamethrower.” When he gets to the word “personal,” he tilts his head forward and peers out knowingly from under his brows, letting each and every one a you red-blooded viewers know that he sees into your innermost desires, and knows this is what you’ve always wanted.

Or, as the boys at Bennettsville High School when I was in the 9th grade would have said had they seen this, “GOT-tawmighty!”

I learned from The Washington Post today that:

Anyone with $899 and an Internet connection can buy one.

No background checks, no permits, and in 48 states, no regulation….

Which are the two states that would presume to stand in the way of your God-given right to burn s__t up at will? Well, California — the ultimate left-coast Nanny state — requires a permit. Maryland outright bans them.

I must confess that — perhaps because the Warthen part of my family tree hails from Maryland — I have, shall we say, reservations about the ready availability of these weapons. I’ve always thought there was something a little unsavory and shall we say unsportsmanlike about them. Oh, I’m sure that if I were a grunt on Iwo Jima or Normandy, I’d welcome them as a way of frying the machine-gunners who’d been killing my buddies from the safety of a concrete pillbox. But in playing a Red Army sniper in Call of Duty: World at War, I always aimed for the Germans with the tanks on their backs first. No one wants to be on the receiving end of one of these things, even in virtual reality.

The political battle lines are drawn. On his first day in office, President Obama signed a three-decade-old U.N. ban on the use of napalm and flamethrowers (some of which use napalm as fuel) on civilians.

Now, civilians can have their very own flamethrowers in most of this country. And as the guy in the video says, “As always, keep up the fight against flamethrower control… and gun control. And remember, Big Daddy loves yuh. Oo-rah!”

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