Swollen and technologically boosted governments are more controlling; that may explain the current politicization of so much of human behavior generally and of gun ownership in particular.. America’s founders were trying to confound history with their Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; governments have normally disarmed citizens as they could for obvious reasons. When the 18th century liberal U.S. founders relocated sovereignty from monarchs to the people, the right to protect that empowerment implicitly came with it; governments could no longer be allowed to disarm now sovereign citizens. The founders weren’t fools; they knew that only an armed citizenry could hope to retain the liberty they intended.
In 2019, America’s post-Christian, decomposing society regularly serves up gratuitous mass violence, perpetrated upon innocents by psychotics and terrorists and endlessly broadcast by the infotainment media. When guns are used, attention immediately shifts from the assailant to the tool employed; the scene is instantly converted to fodder for the anti-gun crusade. The gun becomes the story; its user becomes secondary. Cars produce far more victims than do guns, and when that occurs, the emphasis is on the driver, not the vehicle. But politicians aren’t trying (yet) to deprive citizens of their cars.
“But”, the politician says, “cars are necessary whereas guns have only one destructive use.” And goes on to tell us that the usefulness of cars outweighs the related deaths and injuries. Those politicians are careful not to allow mention of the need for an armed citizenry to protect liberty as an important use of gun ownership that was thought by the founders to justify those related deaths and injuries. Given that purpose, putting government in control of private guns matching government licensing and control of cars would, as the founders well new, be hiring the fox to guard the hencoop.
Augmenting the discretion of governors with the knowledge that they face armed citizens is the primary purpose of the second Amendment; providing those citizens with useful self-defense is secondary, though a valuable benefit in a society where the outlaws have guns. In another comparison with cars: For both reasons, high school students should be offered training in the proper use, care and deportment respecting firearms. Such instruction will be relatively inexpensive, has life-saving potential and should help reinforce the security of both citizens and the Constitution. Isn’t it interesting that so obvious an idea has not been implemented long since?
However, instead of rational consideration of the proper place in society for a useful if dangerous technology, the media peddle blood-drenched hysteria at every opportunity while ambitious politicians jump on those opportunities to advance their control over citizens in the name of protecting them. “”Guns” has been turned into a curse word in a flood of emotion; that hardly seems a path toward progress in a civilized society. Perhaps “progress” is more selectively defined for politicians?
The Conservative Citizen 