I was having dinner with some friends a couple nights ago, and the issue of guns came up. In such situations I often insist (jokingly, with tongue in cheek) that I just wish Obama would burst through our doors with a battering ram and personally confiscate all our guns so that we’d finally be safe. Once my conversation partner’s hyperventilating has subsided, we can usually have a pretty healthy discussion.
The point I made that night, which I also made on episode #49 the Drunk Ex-Pastors podcast, is that we simply don’t get to be “the gun country” on the one hand and lament mass shootings on the other.
To be more clear, while those who favor serious and strict firearm regulations can genuinely grieve over schools and churches being shot up and their inhabitants killed, when hardcore NRA- and GOA-type conservatives feign mournfulness over such increasingly-common attacks, it just rings really hollow.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, you can’t insist on religious freedom without having to endure Jerry Falwell, and you can’t advocate for unrestricted Second Amendment rights without a few kindergartners getting blown away every month.
Like it or not, but mass shootings of innocent people are kind of what our country is becoming known for throughout the rest of the civilized world. Is our absolute and unregulated “right to bear arms” really worth it?
Well, they aren’t totally unregulated (fortunately).
I think the bigger problem is Ritalin and anti-depressants (or an over-prescription of them) such as those which caused a Germanwings pilot to take a full plane on a suicide dive into the Alps earlier this year.
Still more important the various cultural issues (lack of parental involvement, lousy entertainment) which create the ‘need’ for the drugs.
No new posts?
True, the fact that we’re a nation full of doped-up people is also a problem, and perhaps another reason to limit our access to guns.
Stay tuned, working on it!