Guns have become a scourge on society

To The Eagle:

Call’em what you will, Winchester 1907, AR-15, AK-47, shotgun, rifle, or pistol. They are all engines of death. Their names are just semantics. You say tomato, I say tomahto.

Semantics are interesting and useful, particularly for creating ‘false equivalencies’ such as a contributor’s recent statement that “In 2020 there were 42,700 Fentanyl deaths in the US during the same period that 455 people were killed with rifles.” That’s comparing apples to oranges.

Let’s consider, instead, the comparative values of two deadly contraptions that are deeply woven into the fabric of American society. In 2020, according to the CDC, 45,222 folks were killed by gunfire. Another 40,698 perished in traffic accidents.

America’s 276 million motor vehicles are a benefit to the nation. Their ownership and the dangers of driving them are regulated and mitigated through state and federal licensing and safety laws. Compliance with those laws is required to maintain ones ‘right to drive.’ Those regulations have not led to the unjustified confiscation of citizen’s vehicles.

The 393 million guns in America have become a scourge upon our society because their ownership and the dangers inherent in their use are inadequately regulated and mitigated. This is because the 2nd Amendment has been distorted into an impediment obstructing necessary regulation. ‘Constitutionally protected’ unrestricted personal gun ownership is a legal aberration of very recent construction which ignores that amendment’s injunction that the possession of firearms is conditional and must be “well regulated.”

Those 18th century militias have been supplanted by professional armed forces. Federal and state laws should limit the type and quantity of firearms permitted to the civilian population. The cynical complaint that “the regulation of weapons is preparation for their ultimate confiscation” is rooted in the odious presumption that unrestricted ‘gun rights’ are more valuable than the lives of the children being sacrificed upon the altar of the 2nd Amendment.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island