It’s difficult to have civil discussions amid mass hysteria, especially following a heartbreaking tragedy and before the facts come to light. When it comes to something like the school shooting that happened in Parkland, Florida, immediately, people jump to their sides of the fence and claim the moral high ground. Initially, it may appear that the strongest arguments and persuasive speeches are on the side of the victims, their families and those exploiting them for political gain. It should be no surprise since humans are empathetic creatures who use emotion to relate and see things from different perspectives, but when the dust settles a bit, the arguments that were once seen as harsh or heartless tend to make more sense. The emotions of the moment and the hysteria that ensue die down, and people tend to be more reasoned than emotional. I saw a picture once during the aftermath of a shooting with a guy quoted as saying, “Your dead kids don’t trump my rights.” While undoubtedly ill-timed and callous to say so soon after a tragedy, his statement isn’t incorrect.

Here are a few thoughts and questions for those clamoring for so-called sensible gun control and especially for those who want gun confiscation.

Someone Will Have Guns. Who Gets Them?

Over the last several years, the mainstream news media, academia and progressive activists have painted the police all over America as systemically corrupt, racist and brutal. These same people are also the same ones clamoring for gun control which will effectively give the police even more superior firepower than citizens, particularly minorities. Given the paid vacations and quiet dismissals that officers receive when they murder an innocent person or violate an individual’s rights and given how they protect their own (In many jurisdictions, even killing a canine cop is similar to killing a human cop because they are also “sworn officers.”), what deterrent is there for the police to refrain from unlawfully searching or invading homes and vehicles or shooting more innocents?

And to those who expect police officers to selflessly lay down their lives: if you aren’t brave enough to protect yourself or your family, why on earth would you have the audacity to expect someone else to put their lives on the line for you and your family? Is it not an incredible demand to expect of strangers with no vested interest in you or your family to protect you with their lives? Do you really think badges and State-approved titles and uniforms magically grant people the virtue of heroism by means of political and bureaucratic decree? Do you think the average government employee looks at his paychecks and feels any obligation to the people whose paychecks are expropriated to fund his?

Gun-Free Zones Aren’t Safe Spaces

I was homeschooled for the majority of my childhood and grew up in a home with multiple knives and guns. We were raised correctly to view weapons as tools for self-defense and never attempted to go near them without our father’s approval. I did not go to school in a gun-free zone for very long, and there were few places for us as safe as our home. If 98% of mass shootings happen in gun free zones, why is it that we need more of the same types of laws that make everyone else less capable of defending themselves or, worse, mere sitting ducks?

Ease of Access to Guns and a Changing Society

As far as being raised correctly, why is it that the supposed ease of access to weapons is to blame for mass shootings? Americans in the 1950s and prior had the ease of access to machine guns, grenades and other currently illegal weapons and attachments but showed no greater proclivity for mass shootings which were far less frequent than they are today.

Could it possibly be that religious values have been supplanted by political values? Could it be that the federal takeover of public education has turned schools into mind-numbing indoctrination camps that have produced a less competitive global standard of education? Could it also be that a growing number of children are currently being raised in fatherless homes? A very bitter pill for many people to swallow is that single-mother households are a glaring indicator of poverty and crime. Could it also possibly be that parents unwilling to deal with their children’s uniqueness and individuality have them drugged at a young age and blame it on things like ADD/ADHD? Could it be that years of being raised with government morals in public schools, in broken homes without fathers and on psychotropic drugs could cause horrible side effects and environments for children and young adults that lead to devastating outcomes?

Where Are the Automobile Protests?

Every year, on average, roughly 33,000 people die in automobile crashes with around 2,200,000 being injured. Gun violence accounts for roughly 32,000 deaths (21,000 from suicide) with around 73,000 being injured each year. If you really cared about saving lives, why aren’t you lobbying more emphatically for the outlaw of automobiles? If guns should have lowered magazine capacity, do you also support the lowering of the horsepower and speed of automobiles? If “no one needs an AR-15,” does it not also follow that “no one needs 350 horsepower” or “no car should be capable of going over 40 miles an hour?”

(If your answer to this is, “Automobiles are more useful and helpful than guns,” then you have exposed your argument as one being based on the value of utility rather than the value of human safety and therefore you should be dismissed as an abject fool.)

Government Failures Lead to Disaster

There were multiple Broward County sheriff’s deputies who waited outside the school building during the massacre, hiding with guns drawn behind their vehicles, and did nothing to stop it. They willingly chose to keep themselves safe and allowed the shooting to continue, despite hearing the gunshots. Prior to the attack, the police were called to the shooter’s home on 39 occasions. The shooter posted on social media about wanting to be a “professional school shooter.” He was on Snapchat cutting himself publicly. His classmates have since admitted that it was a common joke that he would probably shoot up a school. The FBI was tipped off by concerned citizens, yet nothing was done (Remember the Tsarnaev brothers?). Child Protective Services interviewed him and determined he was not a threat to himself or others. Please explain to me: What is the point of more laws if the people who are supposed to be enforcing them and keeping us safe aren’t even doing their jobs? Is it not obvious that the whole point of pushing for more laws is to look good politically?

The Stronger The State, The More Disposable The People

Over the last century, governments have been responsible for the slaughtering of over 250,000,000 unarmed civilians. Given that governments have shown throughout history to be completely incompetent in the management of human life, monetary policy (Currently, the US government is over $21,000,000,000 in debt with around an estimated $30-85,000,000,000 or more in unfunded liabilities.) and gun policy, what incentive is there for anyone to trust the US governments, federal or local, to be any different?

If American exceptionalism supposedly doesn’t exist, it most certainly doesn’t exist within the politicians and bureaucrats who make up American government.

As a side note: I’ve heard some people mock gun owners by saying, “The AR-15 isn’t capable of fending off a so-called overbearing government.” If that is so, why were multiple police at the scene afraid to challenge the one shooter? Why did the US lose the Vietnam War to poor rice farmers with far inferior firepower? Armed civilians preserve liberties. Otherwise, there is no deterrence for governments to become totalitarian. Why is it hard to believe under a government with ever-increasing law enforcement and surveillance that entrusting them with more power would be an even worse idea than the occasional nutjob going crazy in a government-enforced gun-free zone?

Ultimately, Laws are Political Opinions Enforced at Gunpoint

Laws serve as a means for politicians to sell a false sense of security to those who are already law-abiding and mean nothing to those who don’t care about obeying them. Take the drug war as an example. Since the 1970s and especially the 1980s when the war on drugs began, the federal and local governments have been utterly unable to keep drugs out of prisons, neighborhoods and playgrounds. Addiction rates have remained relatively stable while the costs of the drug war and incarceration rates have skyrocketed.

Those who despise drugs and support drug laws obey the drugs laws. Those who buy and sell marijuana, LSD, heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. find ways to create, obtain, use and/or sell them despite the laws on the books.

Prohibition makes things worse. The prohibition of alcohol was a failure that led to more potent alcohol and even poisonous tonics along with the rise of machinegun-toting mafias trafficking in and manufacturing what was prohibited. The prohibition of drugs has led to the creation of more potent and dangerous drugs (e.g., meth) along with murderous drug cartels that traffic in and manufacture what is prohibited. Using the most basic logic, what do you think has come and will come with the increased prohibition of guns?

A Different Problem

In conclusion, we don’t have a drug problem. We don’t have a gun problem. We have a people problem. When people choose to enable governments to enforce their opinions, they are using guns by proxy against those they disagree with. Social problems, particularly those of a violent nature, are not fixed with government guns. Laws, opinions with guns, exacerbate the problem. Like with the drug issue, instead of throwing non-violent people in cages for doing things that displease us, why not try to push for social change through argument and persuasion? Why is there always a call for more political action instead of peaceful public debate and discussion? Why is voting for someone we don’t know to fix the problem a better solution than reaching out to the afflicted, to the outcasts, to the abused and to parents to help them instead of relying on the State to do it for us? Why should anyone believe an entity that is $21 trillion in debt and constantly getting involved in wars that decimate foreign populations capable of adequately managing social problems on any level? Is it irrational to think that the federal government here could do to disarmed citizens what it has done to Iraq, Lybia, and others? If we don’t trust the State to clothe us or feed us, why would we trust it with our safety and morality? If food and clothing are an integral part of human survival, how is law and order not even more so?

So-called “gun control” is simply this: people control. Historically and empirically it means fewer guns in the hands of an overwhelming majority of law-abiding civilians and the tipping of the scales in favor of governments, their enforcers (the military and police), and criminals who disregard gun controls.

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”

–Edmund Burke

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