With the recent shooting in Conneticut, which I agree is tragic, everone’s now going up and arms about “tighter gun control” or “taking away our guns”, even though the killer is now dead. Media all over the world is covering this, and some outlets won’t stop ranting about guns in America. By now, opportunists are shamelessly attempting to politicize this event. And this is nothing new. This stuff has happened before in America, and now it’s happening again. And just like the last school shooting, it’s stringing up debates about gun control and testing America’s values. My worry is that America will become a less free place as a result. If you remember Columbine, then you’ll also remember all the fear and paranoia that followed, all the worrying and scurrying about gun control, all the petty opportunists (left and right) seeking to take advantage of and even capitalize on the tragedy, and the internal attacks on American ideas of freedom. After Columbine, there was a time when you couldn’t go to school without being screened through a metal detector, as though you were going through customs. Kids would get busted for freely wearing certain clothes, posing hands like a pretend gun, possibly playing cowboys and indians or other childhood games, or even raising a freaking chicken drumstick in the air.
Anyone who would have heard of this would probably want to see guns gone from the land as a result. But slow down. Let’s not be so knee-jerk about this. Before you delude yourself, let’s remind you why we need something to defend ourselves, and our freedom.
If there’s one thing that helps dictatorships and authoritarian or totalitarian societies survive, it’s the fact the people living in them can’t defend themselves from their oppression. Take away your right and ability to defend yourself, and anyone can walk all over you, including tyrants. Without being able to flex our arms, we can’t fight back. And don’t tell me about the Arab Spring, about how all of it consists of peaceful protests. They probably started peacefully, but when the tyrants started spraying lead on them, you know peaceful protest ain’t gonna cut it if you want to oppose them. Sooner or later, the rebels had to start getting their hands dirty. It happened in Libya and it’s happening in Syria, and in Libya, it got Gaddafi killed. If you want proof that having arms helps you in case of tyranny, refer to Libya, and what happened there.
In America, there’s the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that you have the right to bear arms. Why? Because without it, you wouldn’t be able to resist tyranny. By contrast, in the UK, gun laws are so strict, you have to do a lot of paperwork to own a gun, and look: you can barely defend yourself against criminals or gun-wielding maniacs. Imagine if a tyrant like, say, Bashar al-Assad (or Bashar al-Asshat as I like to call him) came to Britain and began his campaign of oppression. You could barely defend yourself against him. In other words, you’re screwed.
To conclude, I don’t condone what these school shooters do, but I think that without the right to bear arms, what are you gonna do to defend yourself against, well, anything that tries to come kill you, or tyrants. Without guns, tyrants would roam unopposed.
Aleph's Heretical Domain 