Thompson's idea of law and order isn't like Marshall Dillon's

Both common sense and the law of averages escape presidential candidates, especially Republicans looking to assert their conservative bona fides.

It's a shame that Fred Thompson is too young to have played Matt Dillon, the no-nonsense marshal of Dodge City in the long-running radio and television series "Gunsmoke." But whether TV or radio, Marshal Dillon had the same policy for cowboys when they rode into Dodge: They had to surrender their guns.

The Marshal Dillon Rule is based on common sense, not to mention the law of averages: The more guns you have, the greater the chance they will be used. But both common sense and the law of averages escape presidential candidates, especially Republicans looking to assert their conservative bona fides. When it comes to gun control, they not only have to be against it, they have to insist that the more guns around, the safer everyone is.

This is how Thompson articulated his anti-gun control position recently on National Review Online. According to Thompson, the massacre at Virginia Tech (32 dead) proved not that the shooter should have been in some sort of tightly controlled mental health program or that it was too easy in Virginia for a nut to buy semi-automatic weapons, but -- incredibly enough -- that there were too few guns on campus. If the university hadn't had a policy prohibiting guns, then students would have been able "to protect themselves," presumably by reaching into their backpacks and gunning down the shooter.

Marshal Dillon begs to differ. He might point out that young people -- especially young men -- sometimes drink too much and have hormonal surges that compare, on a mild day, to Vesuvius on Aug. 24 of the year 79. To think that a university president in his right mind would permit his students to carry guns on campus so stretches the term "right mind" that it loses all meaning.

While I subscribe to the Marshal Dillon Rule, I'm on record as being sympathetic to those who like to keep a gun in the house. This is because I was burglarized one very dark night by a klutz of a thief who ran around the first floor making so much noise that I was certain he was coming for me. I very much wanted a gun -- not to whack the intruder but merely to protect my life. The rational desire to protect yourself and your family in your own home, whether you approve of guns or not, is understandable. Allowing college kids to party with guns -- and don't tell me they won't -- is another matter entirely. But Thompson, out to show he can non-think with the best of the right wing, outlined a position that suggests either he has lost his mind or will out-pander the nimblest of them to become the GOP presidential nominee. I think it is the latter.

As if to make my point, Thompson suggested in a separate piece that scientists who believe in global warming could be likened to those (the papacy, actually) who suppressed Galileo. Thompson managed to mock scientists by saying that other planetary bodies -- "Mars and Jupiter, non-signatories to the Kyoto treaty" -- are also warming up. That may be the case, but it does not mean that Earth is not also warming up; and since we live here, it is best something be done. The solemn obligation of all presidential candidates is not to offer moral support to those who would further pollute the atmosphere but to suggest, even to Republicans, that what goes up sooner or later is breathed in. Thompson can look that up.

It is Thompson's role to become the true conservative of the GOP nomination contest -- the one, that is, who has the best chances of winning. He is supposedly more reliably conservative than John McCain, more indigenously conservative than Mitt Romney, more consistently conservative than the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani and, of course, much better known than almost all of the others on account of his years on "Law and Order." He is the True Republican -- a credit to his party, a threat to us all.

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