A thought-provoking piece from Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker –
“Once again, it
needs stating because it can’t be stated too often: despite the desperate
efforts of the National Rifle Association to prevent research on gun violence,
the research has gone on, and shows conclusively what common sense already
suggests. Guns are not merely the instrument; guns are the issue. The more guns
there are, the more gun violence happens. In light of last night’s
assassinations, it is also essential to remember that the more guns there are,
the greater the danger to police officers themselves. It requires no apology
for unjustified police violence to point out that, in a heavily armed country,
the police officer who thinks that a suspect is armed is likelier to panic than
when he can be fairly confident that the suspect is not. We have come to accept
it as natural that ordinary police officers should be armed and ready to use
lethal force at all times. They should not be. A black man with a concealed
weapon should be no more liable to be killed than a white man with one. But having
a nation of men carrying concealed lethal weapons pretty much guarantees that
there will be lethal results, an outcome only made worse by our toxic racial
history. Last night’s tragedy was also the grotesque reductio ad absurdum of
the claim that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.
There were nothing but good guys and they had nothing but guns, and five died
anyway, as helpless as the rest of us.”