After the Newtown massacre Slate magazine decided to keep a running toll of Americans killed by firearms. It’s been a little over nine months. Adding the victims from Washington on Monday the latest tally is more than 8,180 killed, by far the worst of all developed nation.
Of course, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. So we know that guns are extraneous to any discussion about how to curb violence in our nation. We can talk about doing many things as long as it doesn’t include limiting the sale and ownership of guns of all kinds. Any law that would do that is a violation of our constitutional right to bear arms. Of course, we can place reasonable limits on speech, the practice of religion, freedom of the press, but absolutely not when it comes to guns. Uninhibited selling and buying of guns is exactly what our founders intended when they wrote the Second Amendment. No one should ever suggest otherwise.
That was the perspective of a nurse I had in the hospital. I was too groggy to remember how the subject came up, but I do remember that she was adamantly opposed to any form of gun control because she believed guns might one day be our only defense against a government takeover of our lives. I also remember saying something to the effect that we would have to agree to disagree on that.
What else can you say to someone who thinks this way? A reasoned argument to the contrary is not going to change their minds because what they believe is not based in reason. The idea of fighting an armed rebellion against your country is ludicrous, not least because we’ve been down that road once before and it didn’t turn out so well. The rebels lost, we killed each other in record numbers, destroyed a large portion of our country, and have now spent the last 150 years trying to come to understand what it all actually meant. I cannot see how that sounds like something anyone would ever want to go through again.
But, then, it’s not about ownership of guns, is it? It’s about an attitude toward government that has taken on a life of its own. Government is the enemy, at least in theory. It is trying to destroy freedom, limit individual rights, and keep us in de facto servitude. At the same time, when there is a disaster government is supposed to be there to help. When there is a mass killing, government is supposed to be there to help. When we want bridges safe to pass over, planes safe to fly in, nuclear power plants safe to live near, flood plains controlled to limit damage from raging rivers, the government is suppose to be there to help.
So that means government is the problem and government is the solution, all at the same time. Makes sense to me, at least as much as the mantra that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If I believe that, then I also have to believe cars don’t kill people, people kill people. Derailing trains don’t kill people, people kill people. Cable cars dumping skiers out a thousand feet above ground don’t kill people, people kill people. Poisoned meat doesn’t kill people, people kill people. According to this point of view, safety is all about people being ready and equipped to take care of themselves no matter what. If something happens and you get injured or killed, don’t go whining about the need for government to provide reasonable safeguards to lessen the chance of something bad happening. Keeping the government out of your life and mine is all that matters.
It’s all in the way you think, I suppose. So never mind that another 8180 might be killed with guns before another nine months pass by. Guns are innocent victims of people using them for bad things. What’s important is making sure the government doesn’t infringe on the right to bear arms. Armed and ready is the only way to live…or die, as the case may be, indeed, as the case is.
