More ridiculousness from the gun control opposition

[resqgeek]

When will the shouting stop? It has been more than a month since my last post, and the volume of the arguments about gun control continues unabated. It have taken to hiding some posts on my Facebook news feed, and I have come really close to unfriending a few people because they continue to proclaim their support for the second amendment in obnoxious ways that are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

One thing that has struck me about the arguments being advanced by those who most strongly oppose gun control measures is that they seem to be grounded in contradictory expectations regarding the abilities of the government. On the one hand, as I pointed out in my last post, they seem terrified that the “government” is going to impose some type of tyranny upon the populous, robbing us of our liberties. While I think that this is unlikely in the extreme, this fear is used to justify massive private arsenals which would, supposedly, be used to defend our freedom and liberty from such a powerful, overreaching government authority.

At the same time, the gun control opponents also argue that private gun ownership is necessary so people can protect themselves from criminals. This implies a significant failure of the government, in that it is clearly unable to protect its citizens from such crimes, so that the citizens must take up arms to defend themselves. And this is the same government that is apparently on the verge of imposing some massive tyrannical police state upon us all, stealing our freedom? Really? While I don’t find either argument particularly persuasive, to argue both at the same time is simply laughable.

The first argument is a red herring. There is no massive government conspiracy to rob us of our rights. And even if there was, the weapons that are available to the general public, even the most extreme models, are not going to serve much purpose against the full military power of such a government. No rifle is going to stop a jet fighter armed with missiles or a heavily armored artillery piece. The resistance that they envision is as outdated as the technology that was prevalent when the second amendment was written.

And while it certainly can be argued that the government has failed to sufficiently protect people from crime (especially in certain places), more weapons are likely to make things worse, not better. To those that argue that having armed viewers in the theater in Aurora, CO last summer would have save lives, I want to know how you reach that conclusion. In the darkness and chaos of that theater, those extra weapons may well have been fired, but I am not convinced that those additional shooters would have any clue who they should be shooting at, or that they would be able to discharge their weapons without significant collateral victims. Unless those in that theater were carefully and specifically trained to respond to a situation like that, they are not likely to properly assess the situation and respond appropriately. It isn’t about how well you shoot at the target range…it is about how well you can grasp the situation in the midst of chaos and temper your emotions so that your response is controlled and measured. This does NOT come naturally, and while we can sit in the comfort of our homes and say that we can do it, the reality is that most of us can’t.

Do we need sensible gun control measures? Absolutely. Too many people are dying, needlessly, because we have created an environment where access to guns is far too easy. Are such measures a magic cure? Not at all. People will still find ways to kill each other. But guns make it FAR too easy, and if we can start to restrict access, to make guns more difficult to obtain, that would at least be a beginning.