What the national stock-up on guns and ammo says about America today
www.nationalreview.com
This NR author masquerades as a conservative critical of shabby Democratic efforts at gun control. With bits of truth sprinkled in his articles, he generally gets nowhere. He notes below, it isn’t about the guns, and then very accurately defines why those he criticizes have guns. Perhaps he would feel smugly vindicated writing a last article, saying “Ha! Murderous mobs are coming to kill me and my family. Was I right or what?”
Call me antinomian, will he...
“In March 2020, more than 1 million background checks for firearms purchases were recorded in a single week for the first time since the FBI started keeping records. The million-a-week mark has been surpassed several times since then.
...that “Don’t Tread on Me” spirit matters to a people whose two great formative episodes were the Revolution and the frontier experience. That attitude is an important part of what has kept America free. But it also is bound up in some of the worst aspects of our national character: paranoia, our unarticulated antinomianism, our taste for political and religious extremism, and our horrifying addiction to violence. Americans are a murder-happy people — not only with firearms but with knives and clubs and hammers, with bombs, automobiles, and standing water.
But this isn’t really about the guns. It’s about a society that is, palpably, wobbling on the brink of something awful, with failing institutions, incompetent government, reciprocal distrust among rival social groups, and widespread simmering rage.“