I understand the need to talk about gun control, to wish and hope that some Trump supporters will come to their senses. But actually, I’m the one who finally came to my senses after this last ghastly tragedy in Sutherland Springs, Texas. I don’t know why it took me so long to see the raw, ugly truth. Have you ever tried to compromise with a heroin addict, a oxycontin addict, a cocaine addict, a fentanyl addict? The compulsion is beyond their strength of will and a certain number will become annual statistics on account of this loss of human volition.
True, the data sets will fit into different columns from gun deaths. As for the former, there will be toddlers killing siblings and parents, suicides, mass shootings. Whereas, the drug deaths will be overdoses. But the dead will be just as dead, and the compulsions to never relinquish the sustaining object in their lives will have been just as overwhelming.
I have no interest in compromising with civilians carrying guns, whether for hunting or what they believe to be their personal safety. As for the former, they can buy their meat at the supermarket or go vegan. The latter have bound themselves up in a spiritual trap. Life offers no safety. It is impermanent and unpredictable. The feelings of security that a gun promises is an illusion in the same way that the world of the heroin and fentanyl addict is one of make-believe, just a heart-beat away from oblivion.
ADDENDUM:
After yet another one of these mass shootings, when folks argue whether their gun ownership is an addiction, the passion sounds to me like that of an alcoholic or. . . well. . . fentanyl addict. This is especially so in light of the simple reality of the matter. The New York Times in an article entitled: What Explains U.S. Mass Killings? that the U.S. has 270 million guns and had 90 mass shooters between 1966 and 2012, while no other country had more than 46 million guns and had 18 mass shooters.
As for good guys and bad, the drug dealers and ex-felons with guns don’t fit the personality profile of mass shooters in America.
