Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down
The lyrics are from an old anti-war song by Crosby, Stills & Nash, but let them stand on their own, apart from that.
Almost nothing in this world comes free.
Everything carries "a cost".
Sometimes it's measured in dollars and cents, but more often "the price" of what something "costs" is paid for by other means.
Our Second Amendment is unique in the world, guaranteeing the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms. In that respect, amongst all nations, we are "the freest" insofar as gun ownership is concerned.
But... that freedom comes with its own stark "cost":
That cost is:
Every now and then, someone will go crazy and start shooting at others randomly, as we saw in El Paso and Dayton over the past few days.
Little can be done to prevent this. Sometimes, they're discovered before they act on their desires, such as indicated by the grandmother in Lubbock, Texas, who just turned her grandson into the police for planning a shooting spree. But instances like this are rare.
All too often, there's little that is or can be done to successfully profile and pre-empt these shooters before they act. They just explode, in some kind of orgasmic personal apocalypse which usually results in their own demise as well. Afterwards, there's nothing left to do but clean up the damage and try to discover their motivations (although the trend recently seems to be to leave behind a "manifesto" that explains their rationale). But even knowledge of motivation will do little to stop future would-be shooters from acting.
Of course, there are going to be more of these events. Many more, to the point where we should expect a few of these shootings each year. This IS NOT going to change or improve.
What's to be done?
If one is a leftist/democrat-communist, the answer is simple:
Repeal the Second Amendment, and ban and confiscate as many guns as possible.
They may get their wish someday (I sense the nation is on an almost irrevocable march towards socialism and eventually our own brand of American communism), but that's not happening any time soon.
But if one is a traditionalist, how to respond?
My conclusion:
There shouldn't be one, other than a struggle to maintain the status quo.
Whether this approach will be successful or not, hard to predict (see speculation about nation's future above).
Before going further, Fishrrman's credo:
"Reality is what it is. It is not what we believe it to be".
(a struggle I wrestle with each day)
To apply the credo to the problem-at-hand:
There's essentially nothing we can do about these shootings, other than to acknowledge that they are "the cost of the freedom" we enjoy in regards to the Second Amendment. They are "the price we pay" for having our Second Amendment.
I personally accept that "as reality", and just... go on.
When the day comes that we (as traditionalists or conservatives) are no longer willing to accept and bear this price, that becomes the day we LOSE the freedom that the Second Amendment secures for us.
Is that day coming...?
Is it almost here...?
