Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, America’s gun control debate is undergoing a metamorphosis.
The case for the Second Amendment has classically been one of protection from a tyrannical government; the Founders knew well the need for such an insurance policy. As the American government became more militarily powerful, however, the arguments shifted to fit the technology. After all, the critics cried, is your rifle going to defend your beloved citizenry from fighter planes and guided missiles?
Now a novel threat has once again shifted the argument, this time in clear favor of the Second Amendment faithful. Rogue agents bent on the death of innocents are striking the West where it hurts—at parties, in cafes, at concerts. These days, we are all targets to some degree.
Would Paris have ended differently if a few fans in the Bataclan had been licensed and allowed to carry? Perhaps. Would the casualty counts in San Bernardino have been lower had someone else at the party been packing? Possibly.
The Crazies Get Guns, But Not Us
Yet in spite of these promising possibilities, and the fact that we are all now prey to some degree to any number of radicalized jihadists in our midst, our government insists that giving up our guns will somehow secure our safety. In fact, the Obama administration is issuing an executive order aimed at restricting the sale of firearms.
Even as there are calls to disarm the very police forces that we are told will protect us, there are calls to disarm us, as well; just last month the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge on a Chicago suburb’s ban on semiautomatic weapons. The Left has created a fine boogeyman in the National Rifle Association, even though less than 10 percent of gun owners are members. They have created a boogeygun, too: the semiautomatic rifle, despite the fact that these weapons account for less than 2 percent of all gun deaths.
Of course the real reason many Americans “cling” to their guns (to borrow the president’s language) has far more to do with common sense than any single organization. Like the Founding Fathers, they have seen firsthand the selective agenda of an overgrown government.
They know well that the powers that be in Washington DC have no capable method of controlling arms traffic in a nation of 300 million-plus people and more than 350 million guns. The War on Drugs has failed to prevent tidal waves of narcotics from infiltrating every nook and cranny of these United States. Why should a War on Guns prove any different?
Reality Is An Obstacle for the Left
We were assured that ISIS is contained, yet only days after that assurance the dead both here and across the pond were being buried. We have asked that our borders be secured to protect both our autonomy and our economy, yet in return we have received only empty promises and an influx of millions. Obama has failed to control his own Internal Revenue Service, yet assures us with the confidence of a man under constant armed protection that he can control who will be allowed to own a machine that is capable of killing indiscriminately.
Sorry, but we’ve seen this movie before. After all, weren’t we just recently led to believe that if we liked our doctor, we could keep him? As millions of Americans can attest, that promise, too, went unfulfilled.
It wasn’t so long ago that headlines were filled with a federal operation known as “Fast and Furious,” in which the very same administration that proselytizes regulating a particular class of rifle was caught red-handed supplying Mexican gangsters with those very weapons. Got that, America? You can’t have them, but homicidal narco traffickers can, on your dime.
You see, only in Washington, in a world so removed from the reality millions of Americans face every day, could such a concept actually be given credulity. Sorry, Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, and the rest, but you have no right to strip us of our last line of defense from your incompetence.
Prove You Can Protect Us First
Are we to honestly believe that if a certain class of gun is outlawed that it will forever be removed from the commission of a crime? That the millions of high-powered rifles will just disappear from American streets? That we won’t be sitting ducks the next time some deranged lunatic has a bad day or decides his coworkers are infidels?
Despite many of us being publicly educated, we are smarter than that. The only thing the government’s proposed regulations will ensure is that the criminal will be better armed than the law-abiding citizen—surely a crime against the people if there ever was one.
If the definition of insanity is, as Einstein once quipped, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” then we would be certifiable to trust the government to effectively regulate firearms of any type, let alone assault rifles.
After all, at the end of the day gun control is a matter of trust: Americans must trust that their government can protect them in an age of anything goes terrorism, and that trust must be earned. Instead, it has been repeatedly violated.
