When firearms kill innocents in America’s sad perpetual news cycle, a satire about guns seems almost obscene. But a satire about gun control and its lack is precisely what former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel’s new book, “Big Guns,” is. Maybe it’s the former Long Island politician’s way to laugh through the tears. While light in tone and stylistically breezy, he marbles it with anger at America’s inability to lower the temperature surrounding the Second Amendment.

It starts with Chicago Mayor Michael Rodriguez proposing legislation to ban guns in a city reeling from gun violence. Otis Cogsworth, a wealthy firearms industrialist, counters by persuading freshman Arkansas Congressman Roy Dirkey to sponsor legislation mandating that every American own a firearm. Dirkey’s bill, a launch pad for higher office, is named the American Freedom From Fear Act.

Meanwhile, Lois Liebovitz, the schlumpy mayor of Asabogue, passes an ordinance banning firearms in her tiny Long Island village, infuriating Cogsworth, a prominent resident of Asabogue’s exclusive and ecologically indefensible Billionaires Bluff. Cogsworth hires marketing diva Sunny McCarthy to wage hyperlocal war through a recall, prompting a race for mayor between Liebovitz and bombastic botoxed former film star Jack Steele.

McCarthy is Liebovitz’s daughter. The web tangles fast, the plots parallel nicely if not always in sync, and the ideas are fun temporary relief from 24/7 news.

Mr. Israel, who writes with verve and curdled humor (think Carl Hiaasen), is nothing if not disrespectful, depicting a president named Piper as spineless and Speaker of the House Frank Piermont as, shall we say, transactional. The two had served together briefly in Congress.

“Piermont was known as the ‘Member’s Member’ — tucking earmarks into bills for his colleagues, advancing their amendments, traveling to far-flung congressional districts to speak at their fundraisers. … President Henry G. Piper, on the other hand, treated the floor of the House as a springboard to a better gig. He charmed the Republican national donor network; he was a darling of the Sunday morning news shows; he had a golden tongue that operated deftly from both sides of his mouth.” 

Mr. Israel, a Democrat, retired in January 2017, frustrated by Congress’ reluctance to fight the National Rifle Association and reduce gun violence. In a New York Times op-ed he wrote in October in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that left 58 dead, Mr. Israel predicted nothing would change, and, like Newtown or Columbine, the Las Vegas horror “will recede into our collective memory.”

It has, and random shootings continue, but Mr. Israel’s desire to end the carnage hasn’t. Only now he writes fiction, turning this consuming, toxic topic into persiflage.

Toward the end of “Big Guns,” a decisive accident in Asabogue leads to a news conference in which embattled mayor Liebovitz appears with Otis J. Pickerling, the town’s representative in Congress. “A man of pleasing image and perfect coif,” the 20-year incumbent and “press hound” enjoys a 100 percent NRA rating. Liebovitz rattles off too-familiar statistics: 300 million guns in America’s population of 325 million.

“Random violence is coming to a theater near you,” she says. “Or a mall, or a school, maybe where you work. You’re all on the losing end of a national game of Russian roulette!”

Now that Congress is about to pass “a law giving everyone a gun … the bad news is they’re not giving out bulletproof vests … in red, white and blue. With little tags that say MADE IN AMERICA?”

May Steve Israel’s biting, amusing satire chip away at the evil and hypocrisy that inflame and stymie the gun control conversation.

Carlo Wolff is a freelance writer from suburban Cleveland.

First Published: April 20, 2018, 4:15 p.m.