What must run through the mind of a grown man who feels compelled to strap a rifle to his body before he feels safe enough to exit his house. And, if he has to run into Walmart to pick up some milk and lard? Or his Viagra prescription? That’s going to require wearing the biggest, nastiest-looking gun he’s got just so nothing lethal happens to him. Should his gun go off by accident, well, that’s just more death because “freedom”. Someone’s got to pay the price and it sure as hell isn’t going to be him.
As a luddite like this heads toward the shopping mall, can what he’s feeling really be called “courage”? Depends or some other diaper product better be on his shopping list. I bet he ruins his pants all the time – that’s how much the rest of us scare him.
Do gun rights people think the Uvalde shooter was brave? Do they think anything about him other than he’s made their lives hell? Do they think the police response in Uvalde proves that “good guys with guns will always beat bad guy with guns”? Do they think this one will blow over just like they always do? I wouldn’t prejudge that last one. White people give up struggles with remarkable ease because they’ve never had to struggle. Racism’s victims understand that getting rid of racism is a generational enterprise. You have to surf the vicissitudes, not get wiped out by them.
As I’ve argued here, there simply is no “right” to “own guns. Not in the Second Amendment. James Madison, the amendment’s author could have written “…the right of the people to OWN arms shall not be infringed”, but he didn’t. Madison chose “keep” and “bear” to describe the relationship American citizens would have with their weaponry. “Keeping” and “bearing” equals rental. Americans can’t own guns, but – if the well regulated militia (the guns’ rightful owners) says it trusts you – for now? Then you will get to “keep and bear” the arms the militia says you could have.
For the record? That militia wasn’t described as “unregulated” or “semi-regulated” or “sorta-kinda regulated”, the adverb here is “well” to describe the passive verb “regulated”. Lots of rules and regs should be expected. It’s the militia’s way.
America has a gun crisis because one segment of our population insists they have a right they don’t. Not only do they insist they have that right, they’ll break reality into a thousand pieces to prove it. Note, rather than receipts, gun rights people will bring temper tantrums wrapped in smug certainty that no matter how demonstrably wrong they are, they’re “right”. That’s the luxury of conservative thinking. Feelings will always trump facts. It doesn’t really matter what actually “is”, conservatives dream of the world that was. That’s the thing they want to conserve.
The only way to protect this fantasy world where white men ruled over the rest of us is with guns. That’s really what gun rights people fear having ripped from their cold, dead hands. It really isn’t so much their guns that define them as the racism that motivates their gun love.
And their cowardice. We wouldn’t want to forget their cowardice.