In every story, there are heroes and villains. The main difference is often perspective.
For example, in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker was a hero. However, a different story could be told where he’s the villain, a boy hidden from and eventually turned against his father, an agent of a government that rose up to oppose a tyrannical order that stole children from their families and turned them against the people.
So one should beware of anyone who frames things as “heroes and villains.” That’s just what one anti-gun op-ed recently did.
The future of our children is at grave risk. We associate weapons of mass destruction with the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal, but they lurk as threats in our nation’s schools.
The carnage in schools has continued unabated since the Parkland murders. Earlier this year in Virginia, a six-year-old boy somehow got ahold of a gum, brought it to school in his backpack and shot his teacher. The teacher survived but peace of mind for the students and their families didn’t. Last year, a shooter with an automatic weapon killed 19 children and two adults at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school.
The stats on mass murders in the United States are staggering and depressing. In the first three weeks of 2023 alone, there were 39 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Last month, just days apart, there were two mass killings in California that claimed 18 lives.
The body count mounts while Congress fails to act to stop the slaughter. Last year more than 44,000 Americans reportedly died due to gun violence and there were 647 mass shootings. Thousands of Americans lose their lives and while Democrats continue to push for legislation aimed at curbing gun violence, the lack of action from many Republicans in Congress suggests they couldn’t care less. How many more Americans will die before Congress acts?
The heroes and villains in the crusade against gun violence are easy to identify.
Is he sure?
I ask because, to me, the villains aren’t the people trying to protect the Second Amendment from those who would repeal the Bill of Rights insurance policy, the only thing protecting literally every other human right enshrined in that document.
So while the writer is quite sure that he’s on the side of the angels, he does so only because his own sense of moral superiority prevents him from even understanding that there’s really another side to this argument.
Most of us understand the gun control argument. How could we not? It’s been crammed in our faces on a regular basis thanks to a complicit media. So we may look at those arguments and recognize that at least some of the people advancing them are good people who just have an opinion that maybe didn’t get thought out too well.
They’re not necessarily villains.
Of course, the flip side here is that good intentions don’t erase the evil that could befall our society if guns were stripped from us, so there’s that.
Yet the author here is sure we’re the villains. I wonder if he’d feel the same way if he were in Greenwood Park Mall when a man started shooting, only to be put down by a law-abiding citizen with his own gun.
It doesn’t matter. That’s not what happened.
What this author needs to remember is that no one is the villain of their own story. He should remember that as he proceeds through life because, for us, he’s the villain.