Only a week into the tragic terror attack in Orlando, I can’t say I am shocked to see the rhetoric going back and forth about gun control already. It happens like clock work every time. Granted, there is typically a silent grace period of one to two days when the tragedy is as horrific as this one. But nonetheless, people have failed to disappoint once again.
So we all are aware that a deranged and extreme religious zealot murdered 49 innocent souls. Yet so many of you focus on the guns; the inanimate object that had a human hand stuck in it pulling the trigger repeatedly. Nobody seems to be pissed off at the man holding it nor his extremist views nor how he and others are attempting to warp and bastardize an entire religion of 1.8 billion that for the most part, does NOT condone his behavior.
Look, we get it already. You hate guns. You hate them for your own unique reasons and I respect your opinion regardless as to why you have it. Your concerns are not without some validity. But stop cherry-picking certain world events as a means to justify your beliefs and to impose them on others as a Utopian solution to a much greater problem.
I strongly believe that most human beings do not have what it takes bring themselves to kill another human being. The few that do, might use an assault rifle if available. But if not, they can easily find or build an array of other potential weapons to do the job. I suppose you have no explanation for Timothy McVeigh’s fertilizer bomb that killed 168? What about the Chechnyan brothers’ backpack bombs in Boston? Suitcase bombs in Belgium? Or perhaps the crazed extremist in England that killed a harmless and innocent military drummer with a butcher knife? Some even lock people in a cage and light them on fire. And I suppose I don't need to point out that nearly 3000 people were killed by 4 jetliners that were hijacked with cheap box cutters. The methods are almost infinite. Guns are used on occasion because they are convenient. But if we remove the guns, they will find other means as they often already do. The root cause of the problem is unchecked evil - not their weapons of choice.
I’ve been noticing false trends on both sides of the aisle. People on the LEFT seem to think that the RIGHT wants 100% freedom for anyone to buy ANY kind of gun ANY time they want. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even the NRA supports a thorough background check and prohibiting the sale of guns to those deemed as threats. I’ve yet to meet someone that says “Let’s keep selling guns to crazy people”. The problem here is not to expand the background checks but to improve the means of collecting data and the data architecture itself. The private sector is good at this. For crying out loud, Washington, start recruiting some of these experts and pay them what they are worth to get the job done. And the RIGHT seems to think that the LEFT wants a 100% ban on ALL guns and that the politicians are going door to door to collect your guns. That is not true either. I know registered Democrats with guns. I also know registered Republicans with guns that fully agree with an intense background screening process. As far as assault rifles go, I agree they are a bit silly. But the weapon is harmless until put into a human hand. So are knives, bricks and cars for that matter. Everything requires responsibility and safety and not allowing certain people to have access to it. Some people aren’t allowed to drive simply because they could have a seizure behind the wheel. I don’t hear anyone rejecting that safety measure.
I can easily be a Monday morning quarterback here but let’s face it, despite the FBI’s numerous victories in intercepting potential threats, (and they have), they blew this one big time. But nobody bats a thousand. Let’s learn from it, improve and move forward.
There are literally millions upon millions of guns in circulation. It is just as impossible to make them all disappear as it is to deport 10 million illegal aliens. Let’s focus on realistic solutions for a moment. I’ve made this point before but I am willing to bet real money that if we ban assault rifles entirely or ALL guns for that matter, the first time we see a deranged person rampage into a room and kill 20+ people with an assault rifle he was able to obtain on the black market, we’ll have to say to ourselves, “well, that didn’t work.” Then when we see a deranged person rampage into a room and kill 20+ people with a hand gun or run them down with his car or detonate a homemade fertilizer bomb, we’ll have to again say, “well, that didn’t work either.” Then where do we all go from there? Who will you have left to blame?
I say let’s test the theory. Let’s pass a temporary ban on assault rifles for three years and see what happens. Let’s find out if it works. I’ll give you a hint: Britain has extremely strict gun control laws. Yet Jo Cox from Parliament was just gunned down there last week. How did that happen? Again, It happened because of evil people that want to kill. Not because of a gun.
Let’s please remember one thing; this division between us is exactly what they want to see happen. They attack us and we respond by attacking each other while allocating desperately needed resources away from the true source of the problem and applying it toward those of us that are supposed to be working to fight it. If we don’t stick together we’ll fail together.
Remember that Rome fell from within.
