Americans Suddenly Favor Limiting The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

I’m fairly certain we will not be hearing too much about how “the real source of evil is in the heart of the psycho dictator of North Korea, not in the weapon he uses to kill people”. Nor will we be told that if NoKo decides to nuke LA, well that’s just part of the mystery of evil and there’s nothing we can or should do about it. Nor shall we hear many counsels about how futile it is to try to take some sort of concrete steps to keep the technology of mass slaughter out of his hands. Nor will much energy be spent on saying that if we prevent him from getting a bomb and the technology to fire it at Los Angeles, then the next thing you know the utopian arms controllers of the UN will strip America of its military and leave us prostrate before The Terrorists[TM]. All of a sudden, the whole concept that states have the right and obligation to keep the technology of mass slaughter out of the hands of maniacs snaps into focus and it all seems so sensible. It’s like the Church’s teaching…

2316 The production and the sale of arms affect the common good of nations and of the international community. Hence public authorities have the right and duty to regulate them. The short-term pursuit of private or collective interests cannot legitimate undertakings that promote violence and conflict among nations and compromise the international juridical order.

…is common sense–both at home and abroad.

So what’s the basic difference between this and our own domestic debates? As near as I can tell, it boils down to acceptable losses. The thousands we lose each year to gun violence are an acceptable tradeoff for us. Los Angeles is not an acceptable tradeoff. So we accept the idea of states regulating the access of evil maniacs to one sort of arms, but reject the idea of states regulating the access of maniacs to another sort of arms.

Americans Suddenly Favor Limiting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms