Those on the political left have a very strange concept of how people fundamentally are. They say that people are basically good and that, unless society turns them into monsters, they will do the right thing.
Now, there is something that confuses me about this understanding of the situation. Specifically, they blame people doing evil things on being victims of society, yet, it’s “fundamentally good” people who make up the society that drives people to do bad things.
That’s as oxymoronic an idea as “government efficiency.”
I heard the truth of the matter pointed out this way: If you ever see really small children (as in toddlers and preschoolers), then you know how incredibly cute and adorable that they can be.
They’re also some of the most overtly selfish people that you’ll ever meet. I can hear my kids at that age yelling “Mine!” right now, and it’s been over a decade since the youngest was that age.
The fact of the matter is that people are not fundamentally good and that it is social bonds like family and a sense of morality that is taught to children that keeps society peaceful.
Well, that and the fact that an armed society is a polite society.
Sadly, the opposite of that is true, too. The most violence tends to be concentrated in the areas with the most gun control, meaning the most people who are not able to be legally armed to resist criminals are those most likely to suffer at the hands of those criminals.
Even if places where firearms are legally allowed to be carried, too few people take that responsibility seriously, and that’s why we end up with situations like the one that we’re talking about today. Laura Matthews with Reuters gives us the story:
At least a dozen people were wounded on Saturday in Toledo, Ohio, as two shooters traded gunfire, police said.
This incident happened at a festival there.
And my point is this: Do you know what would have stopped this incident from being this bad (and maybe stopped it from happening at all)?
If someone else on the scene, a good guy or gal with a gun, had been there to put the fear of God in the shooters by making it clear that the situation wasn’t going to go well for one or both of them.
Being able to shoot back faster, because a legal gun owner was on the scene to be able to shoot back, reduces the number of injuries and deaths in an active shooter situation, and making it common knowledge in that town that more and more people are carrying every day puts criminals on notice that they might find that out firsthand in an ugly way.
If you understand the thinking of bullies and criminals, then you understand exactly how this works: the way that you stop things like this from happening is by making those who would do these things scared of being shot back at.
End of story.
It’s just terrible that we have another incident like this that happened because too many people don’t want to face this harsh reality about human nature.