Happy Anti-Liberty Day (or is that week?) Okay, I’m a bit late, but, heck, there’s really nothing that brings out the anti-liberty merry-making and celebration like a good old fashion crazy gunman massacre. It’s practically Christmas for statists.

We get to hear all about how our neighbours are untrustworthy – any of them could be a psycho killer – and thus “we” simply have to keep guns out of the hands of all the mere mortals. Otherwise, alas, we see all too clearly what will be the outcome: more Aurora theater shootings, more Virginia Techs, more Columbines. Only the state, with its gun control (preferably) ban laws and enforcement stand between our frightened families and all of society collapsing into one frenzied murder spree after another. All praise the state.

Or, maybe not.

What about this? Maybe the state, rather than angelic protector of life and limb, in truth, is guilty of collusion in such murders. After all, Colorado gun laws did make it illegal for even legal gun owners to carry their weapons into that theater.[1] So those who found themselves at that showing of the Batman film, on that fateful day, were surrounded by upright, honest, stable, law abiding citizens coercively disarmed by our benevolent guardian the state and one lunatic armed to the teeth whom the state could do nothing to stop.

The question isn’t how could gun control better stop the Aurora’s of the world. It can’t stop them. The question you should ask yourself is this: of all those upright, honest, stable, law abiding people in that theater, if just a few, even half a dozen, had been carrying firearms, how many lives would have been saved that morning? One, four, nine? Who knows how quickly the murderer could have been stopped, how many injuries, surgeries and damaged lives could have been prevented; how many to be buried in coming days would still be with their loved ones today. What is certain is that Colorado gun laws ensured only criminals and lunatics had any guns in that theater on the fateful day.

It happens very often. Strange though that the media do not spend days upon days minutely dissecting the occasions when armed law-abiding citizens save lives of innocent by-standers. Only the massacres are reported ad nauseam. Kind of screwy priorities it seems: lavishing publicity and attention on the lunatic murderers rather than the citizen heroes. Save someone from drowning or a burning building, you’ll be celebrated for that. Use your legally owned gun, which you bought, maintain, and train yourself in its proper and safe use, entirely at your own expense, to save the lives of others and at best you’re a sketchy questionable character. And if turns out they can’t find anything nefarious about you, you’re hardly a footnote.

The fact is that the statists want the citizenry disarmed; their delusions and fantasies about the state as the embodiment of the common good and collective will leads them to the preposterous conclusion that only such a morally transcendent force for good can be trusted with a monopoly on the legitimized use of violence in society. Tell that to the victims of the Aurora theater shootings.

For those of you who believe that the disarming of the public is a benevolent act of the state conducted with the best of intentions and that public safety really is the first priority of the police – I think you’re delusional to the point of a kind of mental illness, but say you do – consider this irrefutable fact. When tragic events like those in Aurora occur and dozens of human lives can be lost or saved in mere seconds, the police are just minutes away.

If you are foolishly naive about the nature of the state, surely common sense and human decency alone should lead you to decry the policies of murderous gun controls. And if you’re not in the least duped by the statist agenda, please, do your part: do not allow these venal hypocrites to exploit such tragedy in the cause of denigrating liberty. As a wiser man once said: Those who would sacrifice liberty in the interest of security shall have neither.