When Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a crowd at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, last November, killing six and injuring 62, no one called for banning SUVs. When Osama bin Laden and his gang flew airplanes into buildings over 20 years ago, no one called for banning airplanes. We're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the worst school massacre in US history, and it wasn't perpetrated using firearms.
It's common knowledge that firearms were much more prevalent at schools 50 years ago then they are today. Heck, I have a friend who took his rifle to high school for marksmanship instruction in PE class. Schools in hunting areas had parking lots full of vehicles with full gun racks.
"Yes, but..." is what the lefties will say, then their words will dissolve into emotional goo. "If it saves just one life", they'll say, despite the fact that we can rattle off hundreds of unpalatable things that will save more lives than we lose at schools, where the chances of a child's being killed is still on the order of being struck by lightning. Seeing that argument fail, they'll switch to, "Law enforcement is trained to...", despite watching law enforcement sit around on their hands (sometimes under orders, sometimes out of fear) in Parkland, in Uvalde, in the George Floyd riots, and despite the fact that it was the left that wanted to "defund the police" less than 2 years ago. Getting more anxious and less reasonable, they'll try to argue the "well-regulated militia" clause of the 2nd Amendment, interpretations of which can reasonably be argued by both sides. At this point they'll scream that firearms supporters are just white supremacist Trump supporters who don't deserve to live, ignoring that the origins of gun control laws were attempts to disarm black Americans so they could not defend themselves; I doubt all supporters of firearms are Trump supporters.
Do you notice how every time, every. single. time. there's a mass shooting, lefties almost salivate with the anticipation that the shooter is a white male Republican NRA member? And every single time when it isn't, they instantly change their narrative, and somehow white male Republican NRA members are at fault? I meet three out of four of those criteria, and the left's lies tick me off.
I wasn't always such a strong supporter of an individual right to own firearms. Thirty years ago I had drunk the gun control kool-aid. I believed that government was best suited to keep order, and that individuals owning firearms were a risk that could reasonably be controlled. Heck, Communism ended without a shot being fired! Then came the Rodney King riots, and the video of Reginald Denny. Then came Bosnia. And the dominoes started falling.
I guess I should thank America's left for demonstrating the true wisdom of the Founders. It was their own words, actions, and hypocricies that caused me to change my views.
Two quotes come to mind, the second because of the first:
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption
of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to
guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all
ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good
masters, but they mean to be masters.” Daniel Webster
"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery." Rousseau
I don't want to get rid of the firearms, I want to get rid of the people who use them to commit atrocities. But lefties don't want that, they want to release accused criminals without bail and, in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, not even to try accused criminals. I do not understand such a warped mindset.
Update: I find this to be true:
But it’s easier to focus on firearms than it is to talk about the other
cultural factors at play, which we tend to avoid because they reveal
difficult truths about our society and the ways in which it has failed.
