The recent shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida has again cast guns in a negative light. After a terrorist took a device clearly not intended for mass murder and did just that, the debate has become politicized by the gun control lobby that is more concerned with an agenda then making the country safer.
Incidents like what happened in San Bernardino, California and Paris, France highlight why a lack of guns can actually backfire. When law-abiding citizens are not allowed to own firearms because of the acts of bad people, bad people are allowed to take advantage of more defenseless people.
If the goal of murderers is to murder, why would disarming innocent people work?
This was a situation on display in Paris and in California, as well as everyday in places like Chicago, Illinois. Crime finds comfort in an area where people’s right to defend themselves is restricted. For this reason, the response to tragic shootings should be to better train people to defend themselves and encourage responsible citizens to be ready to defend themselves.
An example of this was recently in Augusta, Maine. A shooting broke out in a Wal-Mart parking lot between four individuals on a Sunday afternoon. Given how popular of a business Wal-Mart is and the time of day, such an outbreak of violence could have gotten quite out of hand. All it would take would be one stray bullet in the wrong direction to end of a life.
What if a stray bullet meant for one of the reckless shooters instead missed and hit a child? What if a stray bullet hit an elderly individual? Or just any regular human being just going to pick up some groceries or needed supplies? A trip to the store becomes the last thing you know before death.
Instead, this scenario was averted.
Two legally armed bystanders intervened to stop the scenario which was growing out of hand. By stopping this confrontation, these responsibly trained and legally armed citizens prevented the quarrel from becoming a full blown massacre.
But guns only kill people?
This is the problem with political rhetoric. The gun control lobby exploits tragedies like the one that occurred in Orlando to push a biased political agenda. They don’t care about the many lives lost, but rather the opportunity to advance an agenda.
As we saw in the incident in Augusta, Maine, guns can save lives if utilized by those who are responsibly trained and legally armed. Simply banning guns or obstructing the process for law-abiding citizens only makes an intervention like what happened in Maine’s capital less likely. Had those two bystanders not intervened, how many more would have died? Would the story be different?
The real tragedy is that as we continue to debate gun control and how due process factors into everything, an incident like this will never become apart of national discourse. If many more people had been killed, it would be different.
In a prevented massacre though, there is no tragedy for the left to exploit.