Massacre

Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook- all come readily to mind when the word "massacre" is spoken. Tragedies, each one- horror stories, chilling for those who hear the tales told, life-changing for those who lived them. Every time the fruit of the sinful heart of some American spills out of the barrel of a gun, the immediate cry is for the gun to be removed. Yet scrawled in blood over the pages of history are the accounts of tragedies far worse, death tolls far higher, which seem to be somehow forgotten in the midst of this debate.

The bloody slaughters of millions of people at the hands of their own governments set the 20th century apart as the single bloodiest century of world history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Chavez, the list runs on- the greatest murderers in history, perhaps rivaled only by those behind the abortion mills of America. Yet when the line of atrocities is marched into public view which serves as irrefutable evidence for the need for gun control, these holocausts are never mentioned. Massacre after massacre in American theaters and schools is trotted out as evidence for why the people should be disarmed, but not once are these slaughters even hinted at.

Is it because they are irrelevant to the gun-control issue? Not at all. Few things could be more relevant. No, the stories of these genocides cannot, must not be told because they tell the other side of the gun-control story; they are living testimony to the importance of the idea behind the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The American founders were not protecting Americans' right to hunt. They were not protecting Americans' right to protect themselves against would-be rapists and home invaders. They were protecting Americans' right to protect Americans' rights. The Second Amendment puts a wall of lead between the American people and a foe far more dangerous than any dark shape in a back alley. The dangers of a tyrannical government unchecked by an armed populace are illustrated potently by each government-led genocide, each purge, each Auschwitz and every Siberia.

Let the examples be examined- all of them. Let the truth have her day. The death toll of history gives overwhelming evidence that, in spite of the Auroras and Sandy Hooks, the price of a disarmed populace in blood far outweighs the price of an armed one.