I didn’t want to spend the first day of the new year crabbing about something. So I waited until the second day of the new year. However, it seems lots of stuff I might crab about today is basically old stuff. For example, the wingnuts are blaming President Obama because Cubans have no civil rights. Apparently they did until late last year. Who knew?

In the last days of the old year we shifted from toddlers blowing away themselves and each other to toddlers killing their mothers. These stories make me sad in ways I can’t even describe.

But the husband of the woman recently shot in the head while shopping at Wal-Mart, by her two-year-old who had found a firearm in her purse, isn’t angry at the NRA. He’s not angry at the manufacturer of the purse that was designed for concealed carry. He’s only angry because some people are politicizing his wife’s death.

But if some of us had done a better job of “politicizing,” his wife might be alive now. Likewise the Oklahoma mother who was killed by her toddler while changing her infant’s diaper.

Apparently the Idaho mother, by all accounts an intelligent person, wouldn’t leave her home without a sidearm. Why? Crime statistics for Blackfoot, Idaho, suggest that her chances of being a victim of violent crime during a daytime trip to a Wal-mart were only slightly larger than being smashed by a falling space station.

And speaking of odds, we actually do not know how often children accidentally shoot someone. And the rate of accidental gun deaths among children is likely higher than officially reported. There is data going way back that keeping a loaded gun at home is a particular danger for children. Doesn’t seem to ever matter, though, does it?