Despite twenty dead children at Sandy Hook, the US government is quietly dropping the proposed ban on assault weapons. Read here.
Despite the majority of Americans supporting such a ban, the government can’t get the legislation passed because of the strength of the opposition of the gun lobby.
Opponents of gun control argue that government imposed limits on gun ownership constitute unreasonable intrusion into the life and rights of the individual. The government has no business sticking its nose in and telling people what death dealing weapons of destruction they can and cannot have about their person.
However, across swathes of the US people have accepted bans on public smoking. For generations people have accepted controls and local bans on alcohol without the same complaints of intrusion.
Is it OK for the government to dictate what we put in our bodies but not the weapons we strap to them?
This creates a situation where you can carry a gun in public but you can’t smoke or drink.
Public smoking is a menace and a health risk to other people, but clearly so are guns. More so. There are no recorded massacres of school kids by cigarettes.
Doesn’t this strike people as inconsistent? Indeed, doesn’t it strike people as deeply irrational?
End note: here’s a little riff on the lapse of the Clinton administration’s ban on the sale of assault weapons from 2004.
(If the anchor is not working, scroll down and look for ‘Shoot the neighbours’.
The Cannibal's Gazette 