Let’s Digress about Firearms and the Government
Here’s the deal: I’m confused about some things. Political things and pew pew things, specifically.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the past several weeks, there have been multiple mass shootings, ridiculous amounts of homicides in Chicago, and even a thwarted assassination attempt of a Supreme Court Justice. In the aftermath of all that, like usual, left-leaning politicians and commentators are calling for increased firearm restrictions and bans and right-leaning politicians and commentators are calling for loosened restrictions and other measures to prevent those terrible events from happening in the first place.
I understand the logic behind most of the Right’s ideas. What I’m confused by is the logic on the Left side of the aisle. I shall elaborate.
For years I’ve been told that the police are inherently racist and should be disbanded entirely. I’ve also been told Donald Trump was Hitler and that all who agreed with him on anything were his Nazi lackeys, including elected politicians and private citizens. Additionally, I was informed that the U.S. Border Patrol and I.C.E. were Trump’s own personal SS and Gestapo—stormtroopers—who continue to promulgate the racism that apparently founded this country.
I know, I know: It’s 2022 now…Trump has been out of office for a while and President Biden is fixing everything. However, from where I sit, all of those evil, Trump-era institutions and representatives are largely still in place and still in their elected offices. So functionally, things haven’t changed. From what I understand, they’re still just as incompetent, corrupt, racist, brutal, punitive, and evil as they were before and always have been.
According to Black Lives Matter, law enforcement is just “state-sanctioned violence” on black life. Everyday Feminism says the police are an extension of slavery and white supremacy. Slate has an entire article explaining why more diversity won’t solve police misconduct. Not to mention that time when House Democrats James Clyburn and Jerry Nadler compared Trump’s political journey to Hitler’s rise in Germany. If we’ve learned anything from the January 6th hearings so far, it’s that the influence of the Trump era is still very much intact in the United States.
So, here’s my puzzlement: If all of that is true, why would anyone want to have their second amendment rights curtailed? Why would any rational person want to hand their guns over to the very power structure that’s literally trying to destroy them? If government officials and law enforcement are really out looking for ways to abuse their power, end innocent life, and unjustly hunt people down, why on earth would any reasonable person want to give away their best tool for successfully protecting their own life and the lives of others?
I just don’t understand how these two ideas can exist together: 1) Law enforcement, politicians, and the government are all super bad and malicious. 2) Also, everyone needs to forfeit their second amendment right (and usually fourth amendment right, too, for good measure) and hand over their guns to these very bad people who want to harm you.
Alternatively, perhaps the police aren’t evil, racist, incompetent, and unjustly brutal. Perhaps no one is hunting down minority groups aside from Planned Parenthood. Perhaps Trump and associates aren’t remotely close to Hitler. Perhaps Trump hasn’t been politically relevant since President Biden took office. Perhaps most likely everything mentioned before are just emotionally-charged talking points from the Left who have a larger agenda to disarm law-abiding citizens as a whole in order to more easily gain control over the daily lives of good-hearted, law-abiding, everyday Americans.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Opinions? Comment below or shoot an email to Adam@LetsDigress.com! And please, be kind and grammatically decent.