I absolutely trust the federal government.
I trust it never to miss an opportunity to turn a crisis into an opportunity to arrogate more power unto itself.
This is certainly the case with the Aurora and Newtown shootings. I have no idea how many African American adults and children have been gunned down in the last 12 months. But certainly enough white people have met violent ends recently to empower state houses and the White House to act against guns.
Turning tragedy into politics is beyond immoral. It’s unspeakable. And yet it’s happening right now.
The impetus isn’t rooted entirely in partisanship. We all recoil in horror from what happened at Newtown and at Aurora. We all want to find a way to ensure that such horrors are never repeated.
And the real tragedy is that we can’t.
We can legislate against guns, but we can’t outlaw insanity. We can do background checks, but we can’t legislate morality. We can’t even identify seriously mentally ill people today, in part because as a society we have stopped treating them.
Ban assault weapons and the sociopaths will find other weapons with which to butcher the innocent. If you’ve ever been inside a prison, you know that even items the size of a staple can be weaponized.
You cannot disarm the deranged. If they’re going to break a law forbidding murder, they’re certainly not going to pay attention to a gun law.
When we ourselves feel out of control, we want to compulsively overcontrol others. So the whole notion of gun control is about as effective as, say, portion control or pest control. Or thought control, for that matter. The portions, the pests, and the thoughts always win.
In that case, why did I just join the NRA? Especially considering the fact that I have never owned a gun, have never desired to own a gun, and haven’t even fired a gun since adolescence?
Three reasons.
First, any time there’s a battle between government encroachment on constitutional liberties and personal freedom, the government always wins. (Cf. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security, those stupid “security” machines at the airport, etc.)
Second, millions of Americans have a way of life centered around the careful and appropriate use of guns, something taught from childhood. I am not one of those people, but I respect their Constitutional right to own weapons and live with them as they see fit.
Third, the only thing that really scares bad actors from committing random gun violence isn’t dying; they often conclude their missions by shooting themselves. What scares them is not achieving the maximum amount of carnage before they take their own lives.
That’s why they shoot up schools, movie theaters, offices, and shopping malls. You don’t see too many of these guys trying to shoot up a gun store or a shooting range. They may be crazy, but they aren’t stupid.
This is why I like concealed carry laws. They change the equation.
If Morbid Murray’s headed to a middle school to commit mass murder, and he knows that there’s a good chance someone—a teacher, an administrator, a janitor, maybe even a 12-year-old—will shoot him down the moment he brandishes a weapon, he’ll think twice. He’ll probably just stay home and look at the Internet.
I’m not suggesting that the answer to gun violence is more guns. I am suggesting that the answer to gun violence is fear on the shooter’s part that he’s going to die first.
Sad to say, we cannot eliminate random violence from our lives even if we suspended the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights, borrowed the armies of Syria, Iran, and Russia and turned them into Platonic guardians with power to arrest anyone who even looked remotely dangerous.
Using these recent tragedies as governmental power grabs dishonors the dead. The only way to ensure more such horrific scenes is to ensure that only lawbreakers have access to weapons.
If we don’t ask the bad guys, “Are you feeling lucky?” then we’re just courting more bad luck.
And if the NRA is the last line of defense of a Constitutional right, a way of life, and a way of protecting lives, then my membership dollars will have been well spent.
As former Senator Lloyd Bentsen used to say, “My grandfather’s idea of gun control was a steady hand.”
It’s either that or a continued erosion of rights, of safety, and ultimately, of freedom.
(New York Times best selling author Michael Levin runs www.BusinessGhost.com, America’s leading provider of ghostwritten books.)
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