On Guns, Fear Is Winning

And as I have mentioned before, my oldest brother is a gun collector. He is a regular at the gun shows, buying and selling, but even he talks about a sense of unease at those shows as people engage in what can only be described as panic buying and ammunition hoarding.

These people are afraid. They are afraid of a time conservative media and the gun industry has convinced them is coming when sales of weapons, particularly some types of weapons, will be restricted or forbidden. They are afraid of growing populations of people they don’t trust. Some are even afraid that a time will come when they will have to defend themselves against the government itself.

Unfortunately this fear is winning, as many Americans think crime is up, even though it’s down.

.. If there is one thing that my brother’s collection has taught me, it is that guns outlive their owners. These hundreds of millions of guns will most likely be part of our society for decades, and some even for centuries, regardless of what laws we pass now. That is something of which we should truly be afraid.