They have only one purpose, to project bullets at speeds that can penetrate.  Like a rattle snake, guns are not inherently good or inherently bad.   They are probably fun for shooting at targets, but there are many not content to use them on things that are not alive.  And, like a sleeping rattlesnake woken by a careless foot on its back, the trigger of a gun is faster and more deadly than lightning.

I know several hunters, and while I don’t agree that killing animals is fine, these men are responsible, decent people.   They care greatly about the environment, use their guns safely (except for the animals they kill)  and eat the animals they kill.   Whatever my feelings about the anonymous deer and wild boar they may kill, I don’t begrudge people like them the right to responsibly keep and shoot their guns.  None of their children will ever stumble across a loaded gun and accidentally kill another child.

It’s the idea that if small, bookish Jews in Eastern Europe and Germany had only had enough high powered guns they could have prevented the Holocaust that makes me crazy.  Or that the cure for homicidal maniacs armed to the teeth and intent on murdering as many children as possible before turning the gun on themselves could be stopped, if only every kindergarten teacher in the country was armed with firepower equal to the assault weapon wielded by the insane intruder.  

America is a violent place, and we lead the world in murder by gun, by a long shot, as it were.  The land was taken by violence, at gunpoint.  Slavery was outlawed in Mexico in 1829.  Americans who moved into Mexican territories wanted to have their slaves with them, Mexico gave them guff about this after 1830.  Remember the Alamo!  Our guns finally made the Mexicans change their minds, realize we were right.  “Keep your slaves, keep ‘Texas’, have a nice day,” said the ghosts of dead Mexicans.

Texas, formerly Mexico, has the world’s highest rate of felony assaults on children.  These are assaults where bones are broken, organs crushed, real physical damage is inflicted on top of the trauma of the assault itself.  Granted most of these assaults are not committed with guns, but what the hell?  Is this really the best we can do?   

Is it any consolation that Texas also leads the country (and probably the world) in executions year after year?