America Is To Blame For The Massacre In Connecticut
By Jordan B. Rickards, The Rickards Review cross post
I believe in the right to own a gun. As a conservative, I believe in a right to be able to defend myself and my home, and I believe that right is all the more necessary in today’s America. As a skeptic, I doubt that an outright ban on firearms would accomplish much more than to disarm the law abiding people who we don’t have to worry about in the first place. And as a freedom loving person, while I certainly don’t believe in armed insurrection, I do confess discomfort with the idea of a world where the government controls all the weapons.
But I can’t avoid how I feel right now in the wake of the slaughter in Connecticut. I feel angry. I don’t remember feeling this way after Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or the Aurora Colorado movie theatre shootings. I remember being sad and dejected, but not angry.
When tragedies happen, it’s natural to look to somebody to blame, and groups like the N.R.A. are always the first and easiest targets. I’ve defended them in the past. After all, you don’t see N.R.A. members committing massacres. That’s because, in addition to being obsessed about guns, they’re also obsessed with gun safety and education to ensure that guns are used in a responsible way, so that the right to own them is not compromised.
But in their seemingly reflexive opposition to even the most reasonable and common sense regulations, they fail to consider that maybe America as a whole is simply not capable of responsible gun ownership within the framework of the current regulatory scheme. Or perhaps I should say, “no longer capable.”
Conservatives receive a lot of criticism for wanting to “take us back to the 1950′s.” That might not be a bad idea. I’m not talking about rolling back civil rights, or technological advances. I’m simply stating the obvious, which is that a lot of the problems we have today didn’t exist back then. Families were intact. Drug use was comparatively rare. Cities were livable. Violent crime was a fraction of what it is today. Schools didn’t get shot up.
Posted: December 16th, 2012 | Author: admin | Filed under: Connecticut Murders, Gun Control, Sandy Hook Elementary School | Tags: Connecticut Murders, connecticut school shooting, Gun Control, Jodan B. Rickards, The Rickards Review | 5 Comments »