If not now, when?

 By The Wizard of Odd

Just like mass murderers, bad ideas need to be stopped before they kill again.  And if horrors like the Connecticut schoolhouse massacre cannot shock Americans into addressing a deadly and fundamental element in our pervasive gun culture, then we’re sealing our own fate:  these massacres will continue to happen.  There are some who assert that the snuffing of a score of innocent lives is an increasingly rare opportunity for Americans to come together, to pray to the same God, to embrace one other under the umbrella of shared values.  But there are a few brave souls who dare to think outside the box, to question popular opinion and commonly-accepted wisdom, to speak truth to power and, hopefully, to stifle and discredit the caveman theories that permit these massacres to occur.  These courageous few recognize the value of political capital and understand that crisis, by its nature, provides opportunity to affect change for the common good.

Whenever the 2 Amendment is discussed in the public forum, a horde of pious, unhinged, Constitutionally ignorant mouth-breathers can be counted on to storm to the surface and bring an important, intellectual, public policy debate to a mad, emotional boil filled with finger-pointing outrage and impassioned assertions of archaic notions.  Logic cannot convince them.  Data cannot sway them.  They repeat propaganda, propagate insane ideas that endanger themselves along with the rest of us.  It’s time that we stop pretending that their passion makes their intentions worthy of consideration.  Bad ideas, even if espoused by otherwise decent people, need to be quashed before they turn those decent people into monsters.

What the left has done with “gun control” has made the world more dangerous.  Just as their socialists mistake labor as the source of wealth, their gun control advocates mistake guns as the source of violence.  This idea has broadly affected public policy to the point that no public building (including schoolhouses) permit guns.  More perniciously, gun control advocates have ignited and fanned the flames of a panicked anti-gun culture.  They’ve impacted the zeitgeist by promoting fear.  One of the direct effects of their fear mongering is a less armed and less educated-about-arms populace.  Put simply, their gun control zealotry has made the world more dangerous.

Though madmen are ultimately responsible for their acts of violence, gun control wackaloons have been a force-multiplier for the madness of madmen.  Imagine an America without leftist, anti-gun propaganda.  If America had a healthier gun culture, crazies like Jared Loughner and Adam Lanza would only get a few shots off before they were gunned down themselves.  Actually, in a healthier gun culture in which more Americans were armed in public, Loughner and Lanza might respond to that disincentive, find another outlet for their madness and their atrocities could be wholly prevented.

In short, guns aren’t the pathogen of madness and violence.  Guns are the antiseptic for madness and the cure for violence.  They are an equalizing force between the genders and a pacifying force for civilization (especially in cities that promote shall issue conceal/carry laws.)

Our gun culture needs to change.  On the surface, the gun control argument is embarrassingly stupid.  It’s caveman-thought – like banning fire because it has the potential to burn.  In practice, gun control exacerbates the violence it hopes to prevent.  It promotes the disarming of the American public.  That’s like outlawing vaccines for public health.  We need to stop trying to find middle ground with these nitwits.  In the interest of political amity, lawmakers have endangered American citizens, both through bad legislation and by permitting anti-gun imbecility to infect our culture.

Like guns, madness cannot be eradicated.  But it can certainly be truncated.  A well-armed citizenry with a healthier gun culture would severely limit and likely prevent future massacres.

The right to bear arms was instituted because Americans trusted the individual American’s decency and instinct for self-preservation more than they trusted the government.  That dynamic shouldn’t change.

I’ve never dedicated a column before, but inspiration must be credited.  This column is dedicated to MSNBC’s Alex Wagner for her reflexive, ignorant, grossly political and painfully insipid commentary in a moment that could have been unifying and didn’t deserve to be tainted by her bad taste and silly ideas.