Guns and the Tyranny of the Minority

"One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left. [. . .]

Kids in Chardon High are back in school. Nickolas Walczak is in a wheelchair. There are Trayvon Martin T-shirts. Oikos University is closed. The N.R.A. has no comment. [. . .]

In an average year, roughly a hundred thousand Americans are killed or wounded with guns. On April 6th, the police found One Goh’s .45. Five days later, George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. In May, T. J. Lane will appear at a hearing. Trials are to come. In each, introduced as evidence, will be an unloaded gun."

These are some of the concluding comments from this smart essay by Jill LePore at The New Yorker.  I have posted here numerous times about gun ownership and its absurdities. If you want to hunt, fine. I don't but nothing about hunting implies opposition to gun laws. If you think having a gun makes you safer, you are wrong. I hope you never mistake your teenage son, coming in late at night, for a dreaded "intruder." If you want to carry a concealed weapon, get therapy - quickly.

 It is interesting that gun ownership in the U.S. has declined over time. A minority group is imposing idiotic policies on the rest of us. Tyranny of the minority.