It's all about safety

To understand the motives surrounding murderous violence and gun control, we must be sure we are all talking about the same thing. Right now, I can guarantee you – we aren't.

When Jeanie Citizen thinks about safety, she has in mind her children going to school unmolested by gangs of teenage thugs using guns, tire irons or fists to beat or kill her children while they are at school. Ditto for herself.

When Barack Obama talks about safety, he means no opposition for the leftist ideology that flows out of newsrooms like sewage on a cold day. He doesn't worry about personal safety because he has an army of thugs with weapons surrounding him at all times.

When House representatives and senators (how many "representatives" does the permanent political establishment on the East Coast need, anyway?) talk about safety, they mean safe districts where their chances of losing the next election to a challenger are akin to being struck by lightening. Safety to them means keeping all the perks and prestige of office, without having to do their job to retain them.

When bureaucrats talk about safety, they mean not losing their jobs and retirements during budget negotiations or a change of administrations.

When criminals talk about safety, they mean picking victims who decry owning or using weapons to protect themselves. It makes relieving these folks of their valuables, and increasingly their health or lives, so much easier and more predictable.

The American Heritage dictionary describes safety in several ways:

1. The condition of being safe; freedom from danger, risk, or injury.
2. A device designed to prevent accidents, as a lock on a firearm preventing accidental firing.
3. Football ... (omitted)
4. Slang. A condom.

The first definition is an unnatural condition that does not exist on this earth. Airline pilots, for instance, understand that safety consists of managing risks. They ask questions like, "How bad is the storm I see on radar, and what is the risk of flying through it for the passengers and crew? What is the tradeoff between the risk of turbulence and loss of control, and a 20 minute diversion around the storm, which means some passengers may miss connecting flights?" Should they always avoid the bumps, just to be absolutely sure? Perhaps your answer depends on whether you have a connecting flight?

Anyone who drives a car should recognize that you may leave this life in that car the next time you get inside and start the engine. It happens to drivers and their passengers 30-some thousand times each year. Conditions such as speeding, drunken driving, poor maintenance, poor judgement and lack of experience increase your odds of an accident.

The second definition is designed to prevent accidental discharge of a firearm. Neither gang members murdering other gang members or would-be victims are going to be operating a firearm with the safety engaged – at least not for long.

Item four is an excellent example of the illusion of safety.

Now to return to the operating definitions of safety under which Barack Obama and the political left in America are working. Safety means that the left's agenda of communism for all, under the cover of a nation of freeloaders, will never be stopped. "Elections? We don't need no stinkin' elections!"

The political insiders on the East Coast who have bought and paid for Congress (purchased cheaply, I might add – perhaps that is why they like "moderates") will never have to worry that the federal rake-off they get from taxes and debt will dry up. "Pay your way? What a ridiculous concept! Let us loan you the money! Your children will come to love indentured servitude."

The entrenched, self-anointed elites despise risk in all its manifestations. Their goal is predictability. That is why they hate capitalism: challengers come out of nowhere with a product or service that benefits consumers and overturns existing industries – creating new winners and losers. The entrenched political masters just want their dividends and corporate bond payments on a regular, repeatable basis. "Transistors? What's wrong with tubes?"

Yes, safety means very different things to different groups of people. Big media love assumptions in all their various flavors; it makes doublespeak so easy. Be careful what you ask for. Buyer's remorse has never returned a single lost freedom.

Read other Thursday WND columns on gun control:

Guns don't kill people, the mentally ill do by Ann Coulter

What happened to Lanza's 4 handguns? by Jack Cashill

The consequences of volatile speech by Phil Elmore

Guns and government by Andrew Napolitano

'Gun Culture' – what about the 'Fatherless Culture'? by Larry Elder