When in doubt, throw ’em all out. So says Greg Bates in an op-ed to The Portland Press Herald. The solution to end gun violence is simple, he writes. “To end all gun deaths, we need to ban all civilian guns.”
As one of the people commenting on Bates’ article asked, “When we write legislation to address [drunken] driving, do we start with the car? Does blame fall on the AAA? Do we blame the manufacturer for not voluntarily adding intoxalocks to every new car? Where is the call for a ban on all forms of personal transportation in favor of government-controlled conveyance?”
Bates goes on to blame America’s culture of violence and points to Australia, where hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated with threat of imprisonment, as a shining example of gun control success. In defense of his stance, Bates assures us that while “we are a nation that reveres our Constitution, we are also one that changes it when it becomes clear that the Founding Fathers failed to see what modern times require.”
In fact, the America of today is exactly what the Founding Fathers envisioned. For the moment, the government still serves the people. But with power and control increasingly being turned over to the government, it’s not inconceivable that We the People could become We the Servants. And without firearms, we’d be left with no recourse to protect ourselves in the event of tyranny.
