Because I Know It’s Coming

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Over the next weeks and months, we will again engage in what is a never-ending debate on the issue of guns and gun ownership here in America.  It is unlikely to go any further than it has gone before, because each side will get wrapped up in the emotional arguments for and against that have colored every debate since the first Presidential assassination.

If you doubt me, look at the immediate visceral response of the liberal media and anti-gun advocates, and the equally emotion driven reactions of the opposition.  Of course, all the politicians pushing their party’s agenda, either for or against, will be fighting for air time over the coming weeks.  They will mock or vilify depending on what they believe sells best to their sponsors and voters.  Both sides will trot out their tried and true talking points, to enrage and inflame their supporters and critics alike.  In the end, we will continue with the status quo, until the next carnage.

We will not engage in the larger question of what has changed in our country to cause the escalation of hate, anger, and insanity that are, in my opinion, the true causal factors for the death and destruction we see on the nightly news, or wake to with our morning coffee.  We won’t engage in that discussion for there is no simple answer that fits into the 15-second sound bite that fuels the news reporting, and because we are becoming a me-ocracy, where our values of self and our society no longer have a common basis in a fixed code, but are formed based on whatever suits us at the time.

Unfortunately, I hold these truths to be self-evident: 

A gun is a tool, just as an automobile is a tool, a knife is a tool, and a bed is a tool.  It has no intelligence, no conscience, no morality.  It can be physically modified to suit the needs of its user, and electronic and manual safeguards can be installed, but if they are installed by humans they can be corrupted and defeated by humans.

Laws are only effective if they are obeyed.  If people choose to ignore the law, there are not enough enforcement officials to insure it is universally upheld.  There is, within society, a significant group of people who ignore the established laws of the nation.

Men and women of good conscience seeking a moderate solution will be condemned and vilified by the extremes who seek will only settle for an “all or nothing” approach.  On the one side, it would be physically impossible to remove all guns from individual owners, but on the other side -- allowing unrestricted gun sales and ownership would clearly allow for greater access by those who have no moral self-restraint in their use.

In conclusion:

It is unfortunate, in the shadow of the latest mass killings, we cannot put the failed political debate aside for a brief time, grieve for the dead, and seek to find common ground on a solution to improve the moral fabric of our society so that guns are no longer the center of the debate, but identification and care for those who would misuse them is.  This is a complex and frightening debate for all concerned.  For on the one hand it would lead to a corrosive potential for abuse by the state, while on the other it would require a significant outlay of funds for a medical treatment with unknown benefit.   

While I am not optimistic, I think this is the only path to prevent a continuation of this type of tragedy, but I am just a small voice drowned out by the hysteria that is before us.