There’s a cold wind blowing in Hell. huffingtonpost.com has posted a TTAG hat-tipping polemic entitled In Gun Control Controversy, Can Americans Handle the Truth? Penned by right-leaning PR strategist Mario Almonte [above], the editorial dropped my jaw further and further towards the poker table that is my desk (when I smoke cigars in the garage). While an anti-gun undercurrent emerges fully-fledged in the last ‘graph, everything up to that point is unabashedly pro-gun. Check this out . . .
The United States’ current obsession with the question of gun control must seem absurd to the people of the Middle East, where every country is eternally embroiled in civil war or fighting off aggressive neighbors. People there clearly see the value of armed citizens protecting themselves against marauding rebels, brutal religious factions and corrupt governments.
In parts of the world such as Mexico, South America and numerous African nations, the brutal murder and wholesale slaughter of men, women and children take place almost every day. Their helpless citizens would welcome guns to protect themselves and their families. They would see America’s gun control advocates as extraordinarily naive to believe that it is all right to be defenseless in your own home and trust the local police force to protect them. In their countries, there is no such thing as an honest policeman, bands of lawless citizens kill with impunity and every government official is corrupt and dangerous.
See what he’s doing there? Setting-up the idea that American exceptionalism means we don’t need guns. We haff order! Only no . . .
. . . can we say that this particular government — these particular politicians and military leaders in whom we all place our trust — are the true, honest leaders who will always work together at all cost to keep America united and safe? That lawmakers of this particular government will never again choose sides and turn their armies against each other, as they did during the Civil War, to resolve their disagreement over a bitterly disputed topic?
Can we really be sure that the angry confrontations over issues such as gay rights and abortion, or the racial riots of Baltimore and Ferguson, or the growing resentment of the poor and middle class toward the wealthy “one percenters,” will never spread across the U.S. and ignite a revolution where neighbors turn against neighbors?
As Will Smith famously pronounced, oh Hell no. That said, police militarization – mostly federal – is the clear and present danger. Still, point taken.
In considering the question of gun control, the real question is not whether we need assault rifles or a better review process of those who want to own them. Rather, it is whether we as human beings should embrace the violence that bred us throughout history; or trust in the continued good judgement of reasonable men — in our government and across the street — that can make us more than animals in our daily lives.
Reasonable men like … the politicians who created and the police who enforce de facto gun bans in California, New York City, New Jersey and Hawaii? Anyway, you and I know Almonte’s set-up a false dichotomy. It’s not a choice between “embracing violence” and “good judgement.” It’s a choice between self-reliance and individual liberty, and passivity and blind faith.
Close, but no cigar.