You Don’t Need a Gun
Why does anyone need a gun? And I mean NEED, not WANT.
I know the knee-jerk response is to say the Second Amendment guarantees the right to blah blah blah.
But why do you need it?
If your answer is because you like to hunt, or because you are a collector, then I say that’s not good enough. Hobbies are not worth what happened in Vegas last week or what has been happening in this country for far too long.
So I am not interested in talking about how we can allow you to continue shooting at things while ensuring those things are not human beings. I say you should stop shooting at things period.
Let’s try the other reason. Tell me that you need your gun for protection.
Is that why you have a gun closet with multiple weapons, many too large to be concealed or carried effectively? For protection?
From what?
How likely is it that you are going to be somewhere in your day-to-day life where suddenly you are going to need to protect yourself and your loved ones from a bad guy with a gun? How often are you wandering down back alleys in inner cities running a high risk of getting mugged? How often do gangs of armed thugs show up at your door Purge style and try to take over your house and your family?
And how often do we hear about crimes or shootings that were successfully thwarted by a good guy with a gun?
Of course, none of this matters. Because at the heart of this all is something not logical and not susceptible to any rational argument.
Humans have destructive tendencies. Sometimes we like to break things, and maybe even kill things. Guns give us enormous power to do so.
And guns also do something else that people desperately crave — they make the wielder feel more powerful than their fellow man. In a world where so much is uncertain and there is no clear and easily identifiable right and wrong, it is very comforting to think, “Well, at least I have a gun, so no one can tell me to do anything I don’t want to.”
I am not going to tell you how I think existing gun laws should be changed, nor am I going to tell you what I think is and is not acceptable. But I will say if there are fewer guns in this country overall, and if those guns are harder to get, then there will be fewer people killed by guns.
For me it is not just a matter of changing how they are sold moving forward. I do want the government to come for the guns you already have. At least some of them.
My social media feeds are lined with article after article talking about how effective gun control has been in other countries. The problem, of course, is that those countries don’t have the NRA.
I’ve said it before, and I will continue to say it as long as it continues to be true. Companies and powerful groups are demanding our elected representatives’ loyalty and obedience in a much more effective manner than we, the citizens to whom these representatives are supposed to be loyal, have ever been able to do.
The system needs to change, but it will not do so unless those of us who are used to being quiet and not making a stir start to stand up and do something about it.
