Through A Filter

 Ah, the ways of spam. I am not what I would normally consider to be the first audience for a newsletter about "breaking firearm news, tactical deals, gun control & more!" Such is the nature of the send button. If you throw a hundred pounds of manure at a wall, ten of it will stick. In this case, the missive from NationalGunBroker.com stuck in my inbox. Like the manure mentioned previously. 

Not because I have suddenly changed my views or politics. Not because I respect everyone's views and wanted to give their line of reasoning a test drive. No. Instead, I was interested in just exactly what was going through the pointy heads on the other side. 

The banner headline in the email let me know that "Half Of All United States Will Have Constitutional Carry To Start 2023." The percentage was frightening enough, but the phrase "Constitutional Carry" is what stuck with me. Their concern for having their guns taken away continued unabated. States that assured their citizens of the right to pack heat was the best way to ensure safety in the Wild West. North. East. South. The "good guy with a gun" refrain rang out just as meaningfully as it ever has. For some, the idea that having more guns readily available to curb those impulses to solve a problem by shooting someone continues to be sound logic. Go ahead and couple that with ads and reviews of the latest thing in arms to bear, and you've got a dumpster full of trouble waiting to burn. 

"No fewer than 25 states will recognize that a responsibly-armed citizen doesn’t need government arbitration to carry a concealed handgun," reads the article below the headline. The author is eagerly awaiting Florida's upcoming decision whether or not to put their gun permitting process "on the chopping block." The excitement for being able to use the phrase "more than half the United States" is palpable. The repetition of "Constitutional Carry" echoes in some intended majestic swell as the author winds up by reminding his readers of the long road ahead: "Let’s be real, here. We’ve got a president who doesn’t like guns. We’ve got a senate unlikely to do us any favors, either."

Yes. Please let us be "real" here. Gun violence was at its highest level in more than thirty years in 2022. The continued assertion that the answer to this problem is more guns is eventually numbing once it is connected to the insistence on having no permits. In the first week of 2023 there were already more than six hundred dead Americans, killed by guns. Suggesting that increasing the number of states that allows "Constitutional Carry" has already brought more death to these Untied States. Carrying guns without a permit doesn't seem to have had the effect of slowing down gun violence. 

Maybe I should click the Spam button on this one and get back to something really important like the Nigerian Prince who wants to make me a millionaire.