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| Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all, And thus the Native hue of Resolution Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard their Currents turn awry, And lose the name of Action. Hamlet Act III |
We are told
we are unsafe and our government is incapable of protecting us and is
leading us to outrageous fortune. The offered solution is to arm
ourselves against that sea of troubles . The question is whether
that is a path to our own destruction.
All the
evidence says something else. If government is unable to protect us
it is because we have defunded it while sewing the weeds of chaos.
The criminals are not the ones we imagine. Whether deliberately or
by accident we are much more likely to shoot ourselves than an
intruder, to kill our own family or neighbor or facilitate others to
do it. In Connecticut the shooter was the disturbed son of a legal
owner who not only failed to keep the guns secure but exposed him to
them as recreational toys. He shot her in the face with one of them.
Jovan Boelcher killed his girlfriend and then himself with his own
gun and not at the hand of some “criminal” and in so doing became
one.
Government
cannot protect us from these events as long as that kind of amoral
disconnect exists because they cannot protect us from ourselves. We
must therefore police ourselves and those around us. The politicians
who pour that poison in our ear will lead us to still more heart ache
and a thousand shocks yet to come. In their insolence of office it is
not arms they ask us to bear but ills which puzzle our conscience and
makes cowards of us all.
We have the
right to bear arms. But here lies the rub. Rights do not exist in a
vacuum. At some point judgment must rule the day. We must have the
courage to tell our family and friends and leaders that these
outcomes are unacceptable and in so opposing it, end it.
