Gun Control is an issue of freedom, not killing.

I have been following the Gun Control debate with interest. But nobody is addressing the most important argument of all. The Elephant in the room (happening to represent one party) is an issue of freedom.

It was stated most simply by a lady we met in China. She was a Chinese lady who spoke good English. She had traveled to visit her daughter in the US a few times and had insight into the two cultures and governments.

She said not one word while we were at Tienanmen Square about the massacre of peaceful people protesting Communism. Later, on the bus when the soldiers were out of earshot, she said. “The Chinese people know nothing about the killing that happened on Tienanmen Square. The government tells us that the Chinese are the happiest, wealthiest, safest people in the world every night on the ‘news’. It’s not really news. It’s propaganda. But we can’t do anything about our government because we have no guns. There is nowhere in China that we can buy guns. Only the government has guns, so they have all the power. In America, you have guns, so the people have power.”
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787

No, assault rifles had not been invented when the right to gun ownership was guaranteed by the Constitution., But thinking in terms of the citizen population needing equal firepower to their government to keep the government in it’s proper place, I believe they would have endorsed citizens being legally allowed to own whatever common weapon is issued to military.

That’s why, in my opinion, that liberals pivot to disarming citizens with every incident of gun violence. They yearn for a government more like China or Russia, and  oppressive governments are impossible when the citizenry is well armed. I think it’s reasonable to believe that the more equal the citizenry’s weapons to the generally distributed personal arms in the military, the safer our Democratic Republic and Bill of Rights.

 Which states do you think are safest from the government, those where rifles are commonly owned or those that consider it immoral?

In California, you can own an AR-15 (which has a clip that holds 20 bullets, but you have to put a little screw at the 10 bullet mark so that it can only fire 10. It creates an inconvenience at the firing range and seems ridiculous in principle. The difference in the hands of a kook is insignificant. He doesn’t mind committing the crime of removing the screw before he goes into a crowded place to murder people.

Interesting fact I read yesterday. Mass shooters in America have come from broken homes with no significant father figure. The problem we should be addressing has nothing to do with guns, it has to do with the disintegration of the family and values.

(Side note) I think we’d be far wiser to ban violent video games and target violence pornography. If we stop kids from fantasizing about killing, the actions won’t follow.

One more, (mostly unrelated) comment about hunters. I changed my view 180 degrees when we moved to Colorado 25 years ago. The antlered vermin could devour my young fruit trees and chomp down my garden and lop off my flowers like lollipops except in a short season when hunters could go far away from residences and thin out the herd. I HOPED that they were hunting near us. In places like the Air Force Academy, (where there are hundreds of wooded acres) hunting was allowed about every 5th year because the deer overpopulate when not harvested. Overpopulation causes the deer to die of starvation and become vulnerable to disease.

The vast majority of hunters I have known eat the animal they kill. They have a freezer full of venison, elk or antelope steaks and roasts. When they have shared with me, I have enjoyed the meat. I would have no qualms about killing the animal myself if it was convenient, but it sounds like a boring undertaking to me. In my experience, hunters consider the annual hunt a combination of a fun camping trip to enjoy nature and a harvest of meat. Unless you’re a vegetarian, (See 1 Timothy 4:3) you have little moral argument against hunting. I guess my point is that there’s a difference between those who are bloodthirsty and those who hunt for the fun of obtaining a large supply of good quality protein while enjoying nature.I see no difference morally between hunting and fishing. I object, in both cases to those who let the flesh go to waste. Killing for the pleasure of killing is evil.

But an armed people is a free people. We must keep a balance between citizenry and military lest we end up like China. . .with no power.