I made the post below on a local news forum in response to a letter written to the editor. I’ve gotten a bit grumpy in my old age. I don’t suffer fools anymore. Not that I ever did, really, but I’m more vocal about it now. Damn kids need to get off my lawn! 🙂 In this case, I was frustrated mostly be the fact that both sides of the debate refuse to come together to discuss the actual issues, and both attempt to sidestep the fundamental rule of individual responsibility.
Guns are not the problem and never have been. It’s the people behind the guns that determine the problem, and always will be. I don’t care if you label them felons, criminals, extremists, deviants or the mentally ill, the reality is that they are the ones electing to use a tool to kill people. Take that tool away and you will find other methods to achieve violence. This isn’t something in question, this is fact. You can look at the histories of disarmed civilizations across the world and you will find the unique ways in which they have found to defend themselves- and to do violence against once another.
“But Dan!,” you cry. “Guns allow people to commit violence against many people in a short amount of time!”
Well yes,- Yes they do. And it was guns that took down the Twin Towers, the planes used to crash into them and the Pentagon, Pan Am 103, the Federal Building Oklahoma, the subway in Tokyo… I could go on and on, stretching back 100 years! Except that it wasn’t guns used, was it?
You know what the major problem of the whole gun control issue is? When fools on both sides of the aisle stand there and threaten each other instead of sitting down and talking about the real issues and achieving real results. The Left threatens to restrict guns, the Right threatens violence to defend their right to own guns. Both claim a second civil war- never mind the pure idiocy of that statement. You cannot legislate free will away. No amount of law, rule or control will prevent a human being from acting out- sometimes violently. Nor can you threaten violence while decrying that you are doing so for peaceful purposes. If you’re going to sit there and make your Facebook posts about how you plan to shoot any “Federal” that comes to take away your guns, congratulations, you’ve just demonstrated that you choose violence as a first response to panic. How about both sides stop their idiotic posturing and sit down for a bit? Maybe then we can learn to move past our nonsense.
