Mourners look at a memorial for the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, in a park in Parkland, Florida on February 16, 2018. A former student, Nikolas Cruz, opened fire at the Florida high school leaving 17 people dead and 15 injured. / AFP PHOTO / RHONA WISE
In light of the well-organized, well-funded, and unprecedented attacks on the Second Amendment and on its supporters in recent days, it seemed good to me to set down a few inconvenient truths relating to the right to bear arms and the causes of mass shootings
First, as the old saying goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” An article in the Huffington Post from last fall called this argument tired, logic-deficient, obvious and irrelevant, but it is nothing of the sort.
True, the argument has been around for a while. I remember it being used back in the day when I was a kid, but that doesn’t make it tired. In fact, it may be one of the most important truths to bring up in any discussion about the Second Amendment.
Guns are inanimate objects. They have now will of their own, no moral agency. In themselves, they are neither good nor evil. Guns are tools as are hammers, baseball bats and pickup trucks. And just as hammers, baseball bats and pickup trucks can be used for both good and evil, so too can guns.
Neither good nor evil reside in the gun, they reside in the heart of the person using the gun.
The Huffpo calls this point obvious. But is it? It’s fair to say that it should be obvious, but given the rush to restrict or outright ban gun ownership by certain groups following the school shooting in Parkland, FL, I’m not so sure it is.
If it were obvious, it should be equally obvious that stripping citizens of their right to bear arms is not the proper response to mass shootings. Yet the gun grabbers have never been more shrill in their demands to limit, or completely eliminate, Americans’ Constitutionally guaranteed right to own guns.
“There ought to be a law to banning ‘X’ to ensure that ‘Y’ never happens again,” on the other hand, really is a tired response to tragedy, but that doesn’t stop people from making the argument.
Lux Lucet 