I have not posted on this blog in a while. I had planned on writing a post about the President and the right-wing. Maybe I will do that one next week. The events in Aurora, Colorado have eliminated that discussion.
The events are horrible. The twelve people who died and the many who were injured are in all of our thoughts. As a result of this insanity many people like Piers Morgan (who I only really follow for Arsenal updates) and geniuses like Salman Rushdie, have called for a reexamining of the country’s gun laws. Of course, they do not exactly say what laws they would change to prevent mad men from opening fire in a crowded theater.
I am a member of the NRA and own guns. I have lived with guns in my house all of my life. They have never been pointed at anyone or killed anything other than a deer. To steal a line from Penn Jillette, I have killed everyone that I want to kill. That number is zero.
There is a more profound action at work. Nothing can stop the actions of a crazy person. Clearly the guns help with the destruction, but if the mad men truly wanted to cause damage there are dozens of ways to do so without them. There is fertilizer or dynamite. No law would stop these acts. Laws don’t stop criminals. That is what makes them criminals.
Even with last night’s action the murder rate has severely declined recently. This is not because of increased policing or government policies. It’s generally because people are getting more decent. Overreaction is rampant. There are three hundred and some odd million people in this country. There are enough guns to arm all of the adults and half of the children. The fact that these incidents do not happen more often need to be celebrated. The fact that some mad man doesn’t drive a car into a crowd of people on a daily basis is amazing. People are decent. At least most people are decent. Some men just want to watch the world burn and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
I completely agree. Technically, you could eliminate crime by locking people in jail, where the opportunities for crime could be absolutely zero. But the reason we don’t opt for that is because we value freedom. And although .00000001% (if not less) might be megalomaniacs, that’s no excuse for punishing the rest of society. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Nice post.