Times Have Changed

When I was growing up and “The Lone Ranger” television series was popular, a story went around about the friendship between the Lone Ranger and his trusty sidekick, the Indian scout Tonto. One day, the story goes, the Lone Ranger and Tonto were trapped in a box canyon, surrounded by hundreds of blood-thirsty Indians calling for our heroes’ scalps, and our boys running low on ammunition.

Over the din of gunfire and whoosh of arrows, the Lone Ranger turns toward Tonto and says, “It looks like we’ve had it, old friend”

Tonto looks and the howling red men, turns to the Lone Ranger, and says, “What you mean ‘We,’ paleface?”

Obviously, given the situation, for Tonto the times have changed.

As America grapples with the horror of the latest of our almost weekly mass shootings, the subject of gun control moves again to center stage. Many people, mostly on the left and left-center, demand that something be done to restrict access to weapons and their accessories. Others, on the right and right-center, dig in their heels and vigorously defend the protection to “keep and bear arms” embodied in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

A little context may be helpful.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1791, along with the other nine amendments which, all together, comprise the Bill of Rights. Although the Second Amendment can trace some of its root to the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Common Law natural right of self-defense, it was also a direct response to British rule of the American Colonies before the American Revolution, where the British attempted to disarm colonial citizens to prevent the very insurrection that ultimately took place, freed Americans from British rule and established the United States of America.

In 1791 the “arms” we’re talking about are muskets and flintlocks, the single-shot rifles of the time. The ammunition was a lead ball wrapped in a wad of cloth, stuffed down the gun’s barrel on top of a load of gunpowder previously delivered by a powder horn carried by the shooter, and compacted by a ramrod. The shooter then primed the charge with some flint on a plate under the gun’s hammer. The shooter pulled the trigger, the hammer struck the flint, the flint’s sparks ignited the gunpowder, and the resulting explosion propelled the ball toward the target. Even the most experienced shooters needed 30 to 45 seconds to repeat the process and shoot a second round.

The self-contained rifle bullet wasn’t invented until 1847, the repeating rifle shortly thereafter and the rapid-fire machine gun not until 1884.

If times had not changed, I would have no problem allowing every adult man and woman to get a flintlock on their 18th birthday, and I would have no fear of them using it to cause mass murder. But times have changed. Rapid fire AR 15s, AK 47s and pistols fed with 10 and 30-round magazines have altered the gun-toting universe and, instead of being a champion of self-defense, have turned the Second Amendment into a pathway for “self-offense” and mass murder.

The argument on the left that gun regulation contributes to less violence and loss of life has some empirical support. California has the most population (40 million) and the most guns of any State, but also very strict gun laws. It ranks near the bottom—44th out of 50 States—in the number of gun deaths per capita. Texas, the second most populous State (29 million) has almost no gun regulation and ranks 27th. Florida has 22 million people, very lax gun laws and ranks 26th. New York State has almost the same number of people as Florida, has much tighter gun laws, and ranks 49th. Gun advocates like to say, “guns don’t kill people; people with evil in their hearts and minds kill people.” That is certainly true; but people without guns keep their evil in their hearts and minds. People with guns express their evil by shooting the hearts and brains of innocent people. The numbers don’t lie.

The other gun advocate mantra is that these killers are mentally ill and the answer to the carnage is to put more resources into mental health. That’s a lot of crap. Salvatore Ramos kills 21 in the Uvalde elementary school but had no history of mental illness. Most shooters are the same and detecting their problems in advance is next to impossible. Texas Governor Abbott called Ramos a crazy, mentally ill person. Abbott’s proof of that fact is Ramos’ murder of 21 people. Abbott sure has an uncanny grasp of the obvious, but it doesn’t help prevention.

There is one group of citizens whose mental health must be questioned—Federal and State Senators, Congressmen and legislators who continue to pander to their own self-interests and self-interested constituencies, rather than the obvious common good. They all need their heads examined. They have the power to change things. Just last week Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas bristled when a reporter pressed him on gun control after the Uvalde shooting. “This is a tragedy and you’re trying to make it political,’ Cruz lamented.

If the answer is not political Senator Cruz, what is it?