Virtue and Guns in America
Hello there again readers and welcome back to Coffee Break Liberty, a blog where we tackle books, news and many other things under the sun where liberty is a guiding principle. If this is your first time here we would like to extend a special warm welcome to you and hope you enjoy yourself while here.
Over the summer here in the United States we had two mass shootings in one day that caught the medias attention, one in Texas and one in Ohio. The point of this post though isn’t to dive into those much at all but rather to ask why these things still happen in the United States and what the wrong answers are. There seems to be an increase in the gun violence in America if you watch the television, that said there hasn’t been much of a move at all in the stats and compared to 30 years ago the gun violence in America is far lower. The feeling of an increase in violence is something we can chalk up to the corporate media and politicians trying to make a name for themselves.
To hit on the politicians real quick the focus right now has to be on Beto, running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently said in the latest debate, when asked about AR-15s “Hell yeah we are coming for your AR-15s.” To follow up in the following days and weeks he backed up is statement to suggest that if you don’t turn you firearms into the government that he would send agents to your house to recover them. In short this isn’t the solution and actually a very dangerous one as there are over 300 million firearms in the United States and over 160 million gun owners, many of which won’t oblige. Making that many people criminals over night is a foolish and tyrannical move.
That took a bit longer than we meant but on to the big question, why are people in today’s society going on mass shooting sprees. As a country we weren’t doing this 30, 40, 50 years ago. What has changed? It’s not due to access to firearms either. Firearms, and far more lethal ones than can be purchased today without special license, were available at your local hardware store in the 70’s. It’s not due to kids playing violent video games either, there has been no evidence to back any of those suggestions up at all. We here feel that is may be a declining value of virtue in our society.
Not many are willing to talk about virtue as the word and notion of having virtue seems to have left our lexicon and seems to be slipping out of cultural favor. Far too often now the cheaters in life are often celebrated. Heck, how many times have you heard someone say, “If ya ain’t cheating ya ain’t trying.”? This is though not to suggest that there isn’t virtue in violating unjust laws, there is. Violating rules to a sport or event of some kind is far to often celebrated and sometimes rewarded. Breaking vows and dishonoring oneself by doing so or worse doesn’t carry much if any weight in the heart of many men today.
Freedom is dangerous, thus we need to be a virtuous people. This is where we as libertarians and freedom loving people must hold ourselves just that much higher than authoritarians. To preserve our freedom we must be a virtuous people. This isn’t a suggestion but rather something that needs to be our code to live by. And this virtue can all start by practicing the NAP (non-aggression principle).
Thank you for reading and please don’t forget to like and share!
Keep that coffee warm for us.
LWS
