In light of the ongoing calamity caused by the shoot first and ask questions later crowd always eager to put their fetishes before those of others, I feel certain ideas cannot be expressed enough. There is no middle ground to be found that will appease both sides of the gun ownership divide, leaving only an all or nothing conundrum. Opening the floodgates would provide eventual genocide. What else could possibly be built, with such tools employed? So, we must pursue the other end of the spectrum and ban them all, immediately and unabashedly. This entire culture of false bravado and machismo is a nagging distraction from the real battles we as a society face. This is what I see, this is what I know as truth.
If we cannot ban guns because supposedly bad people would still get them, then we cannot ban abortions because supposedly bad people would still get them. The idea of making abortions illegal is to save lives by limiting access to abortions though. So why would this not also apply to making guns illegal, even for police? If outlawing guns might save just one life, would it not be worth trying? If every life is precious, then no pro-lifer should reasonably have any issue with banning guns. Most gun owners do not own guns in hopes of saving lives, but because they wish to take lives, through the “sport” of hunting or the delusion of ever living out a John Rambo fantasy. Yet for each incident of a random gun owner with a legal permit just happening to be at the right place at the right time to play hero, there are hundreds and hundreds of incidents with no gun-wielding heroes. Just in the United States, and on any given year. As America remains the largest seller of arms on the planet, access is certainly not the issue.
Blaming the lone gunmen scenarios on mental illness or social media radicalization is a pointless dance contrived for the public, as tech companies and pharmaceutical lobby groups carry as much influential weight in DC as does the NRA, which is far more than any moralistic tax-payer can ever compete with. These are mammoth agendas serving only to use and abuse the wills of the public for the literally dehumanizing disease that is Capitalism. Arms contractors make more money off the Federal government than does any other industry, while their success belittles life itself. No matter if you are for or against the one fact cannot be denied, guns exist to kill. No life has ever been saved by getting shot. Whether it’s to kill the bad guys or the good guys, guns exist only to kill and thus there should definitely be tighter restrictions on guns and other instruments of destruction. I am vehemently anti-war, so I am inherently anti-gun. Nobody anywhere under any circumstances and for any cause should have guns. From private gun ownership to all-out war, guns are the illiterate coward’s way of resolving conflicts.
Many opponents to gun-rights advocacy unironically believe that military and law enforcement should be the exceptions, despite a variety of studies showing these fields as by far the most prone to domestic violence. I refuse to support the troops regardless of how unpopular such a belief normally is. The sad truth is that the majority of American soldiers are conned into the indentured servitude gig over the inability to find employment through any other means. They should hold contempt for the system which denies them opportunity, not sacrifice their lives to it. These people are bottom of the barrel, for what they are incapable of doing and for what they are willing to do to cover that shame. If college degrees were a prerequisite for military duty of any sort, for example, enlistment numbers for all of the armed forces would be dramatically fewer, as so many fewer would then be eligible for service. Yet how much more competent they would be! With just a few more years of life experience incidents of “friendly fire” would diminish. But if potential troops already had college degrees they’d be far less likely to entertain notions of enlisting. As it stands, even the lowly high school equivalency degree known as a GED is enough to gain entrance in all but one of the branches of the armed forces. The Marines are considered the roughnecks of the bunch, but they actually require a true high school diploma for the honor of participating in government-sanctioned murder. Regardless of the goal, if killing people is what it takes to get there then killers they are, one and all. The concept of the ends justifying the means is law of the jungle territory, the philosophy of animals. The government would never mandate higher education, because smart soldiers are not at all what they are searching for. Pulling a trigger requires no brainpower, whether the trigger-puller is a good guy or a bad guy. This is precisely why everyone freaks over the idea of a kid getting their grubby hands on a loaded weapon. Mindlessness is not selflessness.
And the stereotype of the god-fearing young man willing to overlook that “thou shalt not kill” thing for the chance to impress the only marginally attractive girl back in small town, USA is far more rampant than most would dare believe. Accolades and parade fanfare for what is essentially the deaths of strangers is just gross. Additionally but in the very same blood-lusting vein, hunting is not a sport, not even by the standards of the most self-aware of sadists. Sports are nothing more than commercialism-driven distractions for the feeble masses, whereas hunting is the act of terminating life, sometimes for food but usually for private pleasure. So it too is glorified killing, and its advocates are in dire need of intrinsic psychotherapy. If such generally self-proclaimed true-blooded Americans are also patriotic enough to care to strengthen the domestic economy then they should purchase whatever meaty goodness they require via the same routes as everyone else of the 21st century. But the decision-makers need these people and their colloquial paranoia, to serve as proud examples fanning the flames of insecurity so relished among the illiterati of the rural working classes. Something about having a gun brings out the worst in most people, to the point of making a hypocrisy of their own value systems. Simply put, the whole of gun culture is deeply removed from reality, from the hobbyist to the four-starred General to the legislators fighting for their right to kill each other.
Having a gun will not transform you into a movie action hero either. If you are such the valorous warrior then that would translate into modicums of success in other aspects of your likely burdensome life already. The opposite of being the victim of circumstances is to be an opportunist, yet a truly heroic character contains stronger inner constitution than either, one that is by no means a circumstantial thing. Very rarely in life is someone given the chance to fulfill the role of savior for a crowd. Just as there were cold-blooded killings prior to the invention of guns (something gun-enthusiasts love pointing out), equally were there heroic acts before the need existed for bulletproof vests. To play the hero is something far more than the ability to return gunfire then. One can be a villain without guns, true, but one can be the hero without gun-play as well. And the constitutional right of wielding a gun against a government gone too far will not allow your fantasies of being a super-soldier or freedom-fighter to be realized, but it will lead you to an early grave. Even the most high calibre guns available to the public are small potatoes compared to the toys that the armed forces have at their disposal. Fighting fire with fire only escalates whatever conflict to inevitable mutual destruction, as seen in gang wars, in holy wars, and in political campaigns.
The most powerful weapon by far worth safeguarding is your own mind, because nothing else poses a threat to the status quo. And as with guns or any other weapon, it can be turned against its proper owner, to disastrous ends. Evidently it already has for most of the population, or this argument would have been settled ages ago.
Thanks to exponentially increasing government spending no matter who is in what political office, the Federal government already spends more on “Defense” than every other nation of the world. We could drop down hundreds of billions in military expenditures per year and still, one on one, be spending more than any other nation. But this would free up literally hundreds of billions for infrastructure, healthcare, education, etc. Which in turn would, at the very least, create an environment of less desperation to enable the criminal sorts who we can all agree should have no business possessing guns. And at the most, improve the quality of life for everyone short of the bankers and CEOs who already regularly bring home more than each and every one of their employees combined. Not that they are profiteering from the way things are or anything. For the record though, it is never the American way of life under attack, but rather offense is taken over the desires of American businesses to thrust themselves into foreign soils, and the complacency of the American military in paving the way for these rapes to continue.
If we were to have open floodgates, where citizens are expected to defend themselves by taking matters into their own hands, then why even bother offering a costly police force amidst such lawlessness? And why stop there? Let us completely dismantle the armed forces altogether, and if a gun-owning citizen is offended by a foreign policy, let them buy a plane ticket and sort out the Middle East themselves. Why else are politicians even elected if anyone with a trigger finger can problem-solve?
The finest way to combat such implied, potential threats of a nefarious Big Brother is to stay informed, not by stockpiling pea-shooters to defend yourself against an enemy holding nukes. There’s an old saying, that you can build a throne with bayonets, but you cannot sit on it for long. I think that this applies to the violent tactics dubiously considered as status quo for global peacekeeping, and it also applies to the idea of utilizing guns for smaller occasions of maintaining the peace as well, as small as the dead body of a faceless child caught in the crossfire of supposedly good intentions gone horribly wrong.
If you feel the need to protect yourself with a gun, if you honestly believe that a gun is even capable of distilling self-preservation, then you miserably misunderstand the nature of the real threat. Pea-shooting assault rifles are absolutely useless against the institutions that mean the most visceral harm for you and your loved ones. But your truly greatest weapon, your own mind, is never a useless thing. Not if you allow it to be something more than the mere product of its environment. Big problems do call for big solutions, and if it is indeed a matter of life or death, then the resolution itself should warrant more than the nudge of an itchy finger. To say otherwise is to demean whatever glorious potential that all life supposedly holds, including your own. Granted, all our miserable lot has ever known is potential, but maintaining life, ideally transcending life, is the only fathomable design for that end.