Motus Mentis

In the wake of the LV massacre we hear the usual outcry from gun-rights opponents. It’s just another instance of the great and widening chasm separating the two Americas, and as always the hue and cry will simply push the two sides farther apart.

In confronting this act of evil, the “progressive” mind leaps reflexively, and emotionally, to two conclusions: namely, that something must be done, and that government ought to do it. The details don’t even matter much; the most vociferous gun-rights restrictionists are generally those least well-informed about firearms.

Those of us on the other side of this divide see it very differently: that there is ineradicable evil in the world. No new law or government policy will change this. Indeed, no proposed law would have prevented this massacre; there are about 300 million guns in America, and a psychopath bent on slaughter will get his hands on what he wants, laws or no laws. The problem is too many guns in America, you say? Then explain why gun homicides have fallen by half in recent years, even as gun sales have skyrocketed.

I don’t want to drone on about gun control in this post; I’ve already done so, here and elsewhere. My point, rather, is that in this increasingly shrunken, pressurized, overheated and chaotic world, nothing is going to prevent these horrors. (I think mere shootings is just the beginning.) The abyss is real — and however much we may flatter ourselves that we can paper it over with ostentatious gestures, some of us are always going to fall through.