There is Never a Time to Talk About Gun Control

     One of the oft-made questions in the aftermath of a mass shooting is, "When can we talk about gun control?" The usual response to this from pro-gun rights people is, "Now is not the time to talk about gun control," the implication being that you do not politicize an issue when people are grieving and that discussion of gun control can come later. And there is truth to this, about you wait awhile before bringing in the politics. Of course, the later in which gun control supposedly would be discussed never comes, because the issue fades from memory and the gun rights people are not eager to bring it up. This is a strategy used by the gun rights side I suppose, as when they say, "Now is not the time to discuss the issue..." they say this knowing full well that they never really intend to discuss it in the way that the pro-gun-control proponents want to (which is to discuss what kind of gun control should be done).

     This over time has led to frustration from the gun control proponents, who argue, "Well WHEN IS THE TIME to talk about gun control then?" Well to give them an answer, I would say, "Never." This is the answer I would like politicians to give as well. The reasoning is because, the right to keep and bear arms is a sacrosanct right. It is the right upon which all the others depend, and it is as sacred and fundamental to a free people as all of the other rights. After 9/11 happened, in which 3,000 Americans were slaughtered, nobody was asking, "When is the time to talk about speech control? Press control? Privacy infringement? Due process limitations?" Because those rights are considered sacrosanct. To the extent that anything was done by the Bush administration, it was dragged through the mud, called "fascist," "Hitler," "Nazi," and so forth.

     The right to keep and bear arms is no different. In addition to this though, we know that the guns really are not the cause of these mass shootings. This is because the guns used in these mass shootings have been around for many decades now. One of the worst mass shootings in this nation's history, the Virginia Tech massacre, involved the use of only handguns. The 1911 pistol, a .45 caliber handgun that takes a detachable 12 shot magazine, has been around since 1911. 9mm pistols have also been in use for many decades. The Thompson submachine gun ("Tommy" gun) has been available since the 1920s, and during the 1920s, people could purchase automatic fire Tommy guns at hardware stores, gas stations, gun stores, or by mail-order, where an automatic fire gun known for its use by gangsters was delivered right to your front door, no background check, whatever size magazine (s) you wanted, and that was that, yet mass shootings were not a problem then. After WWII, you could get WWII M1 Carbines delivered as well, a semiautomatic, detachable magazine rifle. The AK-47 was invented in 1947, although I do not know when it became available in the United States, but they have been available for a much longer time than these mass shootings of late. And the AR-15 became available in 1964 to the civilian market. Yet, these mass shootings are a very recent phenomenon in their frequency. Which tells us that it can't be the guns that are the cause. There is something else at hand that is contributing to them.

     Muslim terrorism has been one contributor, as three of the mass shootings of late have been committed by Muslim terrorists. These are the Fort Hood shooting, the San Bernardino shooting, and the Orlando nightclub massacre. Some of the others have just been plain straight-up mental illness. And then others have been cases of pure evil it seems.