PUSHBACK

Something very good – though very dangerous to the congealing police state (but not to liberty-minded people) has occurred: Millions of Americans have decided they will not abide by any demand they register their firearms – much less surrender them. And are saying so – openly. More than a few local sheriffs have also publicly stated they will not enforce any such demands. For the first time in living memory, the debate is not fundamentally about which guns – or how many guns. It is about whether the government has any business even knowing whether you’ve got guns at all – much less dictating the type you’re allowed to have.
It’s a Rubicon moment – because this idea involves a great deal more than merely firearms. It is an assertion – though not fully conscious, yet – that trampling the rights of any individual because of the actions of another individual is an ethical outrage. Not just the right to keep a gun.

All rights.

The Beat-era author/philosopher William S. Burroughs once quipped: “After a shooting, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” He said that decades ago and at long last, people are coming to resent being vilified – and punished – not for anything they did. But because some other person did something.

Or even worse, because some other person might do something.

Group guilt isn’t selling as well as it once did. And the stock people take in individual responsibility seems to be increasing.

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