The Sage Observer

Gun Control

Almost always when politicians discuss an issue–any issue, there is, usually, the ostensible issue at hand, and there is the hidden issue–the seen and the unseen, as Frederic Bastiat would say. So it is with the issue of gun control and our second amendment.

I will first address what I believe is the hidden issue–the unseen; and that is the removal of guns from everybody–every home within our nation. A people without guns are a controlled people. Hitler proved that. As Hitler also learned, however, for the most part, only the “good” people gave up their guns. As to the criminals, were they not part of the resistance?

Let us now discuss the seen agenda–gun control. Ostensibly, if we can control the buying and selling of guns within our country, we can reduce to a minimum, if not eliminate, the mass shootings and killings, tragedies, which we are now experiencing almost daily (Well, it may not be quite as frequent as that, but it sure seems that way). Frankly, I don’t believe that. I submit to you that if we outlawed guns completely and repealed the second amendment tomorrow, such tragedies would continue to occur–the only difference would be the use of different weapons. These tragedies are not caused by guns. They may be facilitated by them, but guns are not the cause. Essentially, these tragedies emanate from one or a combination of two causes, mental illness and anger, both of which appear to be on the increase every day, and our government seems set on exacerbating them–another subject for another time.

There is another aspect to this subject. We already have laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It is against the law to commit a crime with a gun. It is against the law to commit murder. It is against the law for a felon to own a gun. One cannot legally buy a gun without identifying himself. We have computers which can track felons, gun sales, and just about everything else; and yet, we don’t seem to effectively do that. We need to enforce the laws we already have on the books. It seems to me.

In conjunction with this, we have problems with gangs in our country. We talk about them; we occasionally arrest some of them; we know who they are and what they do; we have been following their activities for years on end, forever investigating them; and, yet, we seem to never do anything to eliminate the problem. I don’t know. Perhaps this is what we want.  

 Also, we have abominable drop-out rates in our schools about which we, for the most part, do nothing. Maybe I misspoke. We do “dumb down” curriculums, cut school budgets, increase class sizes, and do away with discipline, for whatever all that is worth to our nation and society as a whole. To this, I want to make a side comment. We all aren't blessed with the same level of intelligence, but a little hard work will go a long way toward equalizing our knowledge. There are a lot of very smart people out there who don’t know a “hill of beans”.

 But I digress. Here I am talking about subjects which I said above are for another day. Besides, these are problems for someone else to worry about. These aren't our problems. What we need is gun control. What do you think?

Ronald Miller

mtss86@bellsouth.net