My friend sent me an email about a secret plot to make Americans register their guns on their 2010 tax returns. Some quick research indicated that while someone did try to get such a law passed, the effort failed.
The “ban guns” crowd misses the point that guns in the hands of responsible civilians is a failsafe against the kind of tyranny that gave birth to America in the first place (just take a look at the Declaration of Independence). They point to the annual gun death toll, however sad, and say the deaths (mostly at the hands of felons prohibited from owning guns anyway) could have been prevented. Well, so can traffic accidents and airline crashes and medical malpractice deaths if cars and planes and doctors are banned. Fortunately, society sees that the utility of having cars, planes and doctors far outweighs the risk.
Unfortunately, many in society can’t get their minds wrapped around the idea that the utility associated with private gun ownership is forward-centric, not contemporaneous to the moment, and in this way is perhaps unique. Some just can’t or won’t see it; it’s like they’re blind to virtually all of history – that it’s practically written in DNA that powerful people will seize even more power if they can, and some of them would do anything, kill anybody including women and kids, to be king. But there’s a part of me that’s suspicious and questions the motives of otherwise smart-appearing people talking about taking guns away from responsible Americans.