The new assault on guns

It didn’t take long for the family of one of the Jonesboro slaughter victims to plan a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from the makers of firearms.

One can perhaps understand and excuse the rage they feel over the death of their daughter. But, make no mistake about it, the anti-gun, anti-Constitution, anti-freedom zealots will use this massacre in an Arkansas school yard as exhibit A in their political case against the Second Amendment.

The ramifications of this case are profound because the guns used by the boys, aged 11 and 13, were stolen. This is nothing short of a crusade to deny the availability of guns to anyone for any reason because they can always fall into the wrong hands through no fault of the owner.

Firearms manufacturers should learn a lesson from the campaign against the tobacco companies. It’s nothing less than political extortion when companies that produce legal products are held liable for their misuse. What’s next? Will auto manufacturers be held liable when one of their vehicles is driven into a pedestrian at 60 mph?

Accidents happen. The result of such perverted public policies will inevitably be a decline in freedom and the availability of reasonably priced products that make all of our lives better.

Worse yet, the finger-pointing at guns in the Jonesboro case is nothing more than simple-minded foolishness and the political exploitation of tragedy.

The killings in Jonesboro bear a striking resemblance to the earlier slaughters in Paducah, Kentucky, and Pearl, Mississippi, not just because guns were involved. In all three cases, there is strong evidence the alleged perpetrators dabbled in devil worship and may have been involved in satanic cults.

It’s a little tougher to blame Satan than gun manufacturers and a lot less profitable.

But the danger in seeking scapegoats for acts of pure evil is obvious. We’re missing the point. We’re grasping at straws. We’re falling into a trap.

I firmly believe in strict gun control. And the best kind of gun control to prevent future slaughters in school yards would be the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom in America. It’s not enough to simply halt the war on morality in our society. It must be reversed. There must be a renewed emphasis on the immutable values that held our culture together for the last 200 years. Those values begin with the simple truths brought down by Moses from Mount Sinai.

Let’s face it, getting rid of all the guns in the country isn’t going to stop evil people from doing evil deeds. In fact, as the founders of our nation clearly understood, it will simply provide the government license to run roughshod over every other inalienable right. Historical illustrations abound. Every totalitarian regime in modern history — from Hitler to Stalin to Mao — disarmed the civilian population, rendering it accountable to the government rather than the government being accountable to the people.

The United States will be no different. That’s why many constitutionalists see the right to bear arms as the progenitor of every other freedom, every other right. Mao knew what he was talking about when he said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” An armed populace is the ultimate check and balance on government tyranny.

But even an armed populace not grounded in biblical morality is helpless to defend itself from tyranny. That’s why we need gun control based on self-control, not government control.

The founders of our country understood that man is a pawn in a spiritual war raging not just on earth but throughout the universe. Having disarmed much of the nation spiritually, the American government now seems intent on disarming us physically — rendering the righteous remnant helpless to defend ourselves and our families from the predictable hell on earth such evil policies will inevitably bring about.

George Washington said it best: “Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundations of the fabric?”

Can there be any doubt that removing from school and public policy debates the Ten Commandments, the Bible, prayer and any vestige of higher authority has left the foundations of the fabric in tatters? Returning them and restoring the fabric will give us the only kind of gun control that makes sense and preserves freedom.