Yet another article about yet another shitty government official and in the comments, the usual:
Yeah, we should totally give up our guns to these tyrants!
Okay, yeah, comments (often a cesspool, not representative, blah blah), but this sentiment is so commonly expressed in the comments that someone less obsessed with gun regs/rights (take yer pick) is likely simply to skip past them.
I, for example, usually skip past.
But today a new thought hit: Guns are a simple answer to a tough problem.
I’m a good-government type of gal, but any leftist who isn’t at least skeptical of governmental power isn’t doing it right. I like big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies, and the only way to live well in a big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies is to establish some kind of rule of law to navigate those messes and complications. And if that law is to have a chance at approaching justice, good government is required.
But it’s also manifestly the case that government isn’t always good, that law falls short of justice, and sometimes you really do have to defend yourself by any means necessary.
Thus, while it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at so-called gun-nuts, there is some small part of me that gets some small part of their agenda. There’s a lot I don’t get and a lot I don’t agree with, but the notion that the government is not always to be trusted. . . ?
Anyway, trying to wrest good government out of bad is hard, hard work, rarely straightforward, and almost always takes too long. And even if you think you’ll fail, you have to believe enough in the worth of good government to try.
Not everyone believes this, of course, which is why some prefer the quick recourse to weaponry. But there may be others who are driven less by animus against the government (or the big messy society which requires it) than a frustration that the Right and the Good are just so goddamned obvious and just as goddamned obviously never to be achieved by standard operating procedures, that the best way to the Right and the Good is to blow a hole through those SOPs.
Thus, the gun: It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s done.
~~~
h/t: Brad DeLong
AbsurdBeats 
We just don’t get many good politicians to choose from, do we.
The right gets mad about guns because we want them to plan ahead; you’ve got to wait 5 days to receive your purchased weapon.
Yet, the right wants voters to, yep, PLAN AHEAD and get a valid ID.
Maybe it’s off your topic; give me someone with a little consistency, a lack of “the bible says”, and a common sense approach, and I might go so far as to put a sign in my front yard come election time.
Well, BJ, you could always run.
As for consistency, well, there is a consistent line here, only it has less to do with planning and more to do with who deserves weapons and votes. . . .