Time to roll back some of our gun rights

The shootings in Las Vegas show just how frightening this country has become. People can’t even go out in public — to a marathon or a concert or a club — without the fear of being harmed or killed.

After 9/11, we committed ourselves to doing everything we could to keep international terrorists from attacking the U.S. To a large extent, we’ve succeeded.

What we haven’t been able to do is get a handle on “lone wolf” shootings. A nightclub in Orlando. A church in Charleston. S.C. A community college in Roseburg, Ore. A workplace party in San Bernardino, the work of a lone-wolf couple. And now Las Vegas. The carnage is consistent.

One of the ways the U.S. minimized the threat of international terrorist attacks was by playing fast and loose with privacy rights. The security measures laid out in the Patriot Act, for example, were pretty drastic. For years, federal law allowed the National Security Agency to collect phone data on millions of Americans. That was a huge change — and yet, the original law passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly. Republicans and Democrats alike were all in.

In time, some of the changes were rolled back — the NSA can no longer indiscriminately snoop on phone records. But not all the changes were undone, and it’s hard to argue that those changes hurt the country. There hasn’t been another 9/11.

It’s time to do it again. If we as Americans were willing to give up some rights or expectations in the name of fighting terrorism, we should be willing to do the same with our gun rights.

Assault weapons should be considered tools of terrorism, pure and simple, no matter who is pulling the trigger. Once, federal law banned semiautomatic firearms with large, detachable magazines. A few years ago that ban expired. It should be revived.

No matter who is behind the trigger, shootings like the slaughter in Las Vegas are acts of terrorism, and we should treat them as such.

Conservatives often say the top priority of government is to protect its citizens. Well, it’s time to start protecting ourselves from ourselves, as well as from outsiders.

And gun owners and gun lovers should be leading the charge.

What might have been: Let us bow our heads and mourn the stillborn birth of one of history’s great political lines.

It happened when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was denying a story that he had considered quitting over the summer. The media asked him whether, as the story reported, he had called President Trump “a moron” during a private meeting. Or perhaps, a “f— moron.”

It was a golden opportunity. We’ve had Richard Nixon’s “I’m not a crook.” And Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.”

Tillerson, however, dodged the question — thereby losing his shot at immortality with the line, “I did not call the president a f— moron.”

Movie time: “Kingsman: The Golden Circle.” Lots of action here, but no real story in this sequel. The most memorable scene is Elton John playing an action clown with no vocals and no music. If you see it, go for the bargain matinee and with someone who has poor movie taste.

“American Made.” Should be retitled “American Badly Made,” because nothing works in this jumbled story. Tom Cruise stars as an airline pilot turned CIA contractor turned undercover drug smuggler for a Colombian cartel, who somehow winds up with a million bucks buried in his backyard.

It manages to make Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” movies look plausible by comparison. I actually asked for a refund at the theater. No dice, but you get the idea.

Hoodies: The United Playaz have gone uptown, as evidenced by their annual fundraiser at the Wine Bar the other night. The event drew a who’s who of city officials, including Police Chief Bill Scott, as well as a host of big charity names like Tipping Point’s Daniel Lurie.

Playaz, long a fixture on the South of Market scene, is known for its work with not just kids, but ex-convicts as well. They’re a bit like Glide Memorial Church, but for people with records. In fact, the special guest at the fundraiser was a guy who had served 34 years in prison.

When I got up to speak, I noticed how all the members were wearing T-shirts with the Playaz motto,” “It takes the hood to save the hood.”

They should swap “the” for “a” — as in, “It takes a hood to save a hood.”

Losing hand: The Giants lost a disastrous 98 games this season, but you wouldn’t know it from the last homestand. Nearly 39,000 people were on hand for the final game.

I bet many of them bought their tickets weeks in advance, hoping to see the 100th loss.

My friend Bill O’Keefe has eight season tickets. For the second half of the season, he couldn’t give them away. But for the last home series, everyone was calling him.

And yet the Giants couldn’t even get that right, denying the faithful the bragging rights of having been there for the centennial loss.