The nation of China is a fascinating place. The history and culture are among the most interesting in the world to me.

The government? Not so much.

Luckily, I don’t have to interact with what the Chinese government says or does very much. More correctly, I didn’t. However, lately, Chinese state-run media outlets have opted to pontificate about the Second Amendment and gun control.

Now, to be clear, a lot of countries voice opinions on what other nations do and permit. I actually take issue with China about their human rights record, specifically the whole “herding people into camps, taking their organs, and sterilizing them” thing.

You know, small stuff.

But China is talking about the Second Amendment, a core part of who we are as a nation, and it’s troubling. In particular, why are they so interested in American gun laws? It’s not like they’re that interested in American lives. If they were, they might have taken more care in trying to contain COVID-19. They might even be more open with the rest of the world in trying to find the origins of the pandemic.

They’re not.

So instead, China is doing this for reasons that will benefit them. We, as a nation, would do well to question why.

The most obvious answer, of course, is that they benefit from a divided United States. If we’re arguing and debating domestic matters with such vehemence, we can’t examine what they’ve done and continue to do within their own borders.

Further, by claiming our refusal to adopt gun control is a human rights issue, they’re trying to gaslight the international community to ignore the concentration camps and eugenics taking place within their own borders.

That’s the easy answer, and Occams Razor tells us that’s probably the right one.

Yet Occam’s Razor also assumes you have all the facts. We may not in this case.

See, China and the US aren’t exactly best pals. China is an aggressive military power that is trying desperately to become a superpower. Arguably, they’re close. Plus, no one is expecting them to be a peaceful superpower.

That means the odds are that sooner or later, the United States and China will clash. If that clash becomes a war, we can’t rule out the possibility of invasion. It’s better to fight in someone else’s yard than your own. That means we must at least consider that any contingency plans include the possibility of invading the US.

After World War II, a story popped up that Japanese General Yamamoto warned his people that if they invaded the US, there would be “a rifle behind every blade of grass.” The story appears to be apocryphal, unfortunately, but the sentiment expressed is certainly valid. As an armed society, we have the means to assist our military in repelling invaders. Plus, since the popular AR-15 uses the same ammunition and magazines as the M-4/M-16, we can easily be resupplied from military stores if need be.

In light of this, China’s opposition to gun ownership in the United States takes on a frightening tone.

It’s not about discord among the American citizenry, but about hopefully pushing the United States to weaken itself so that if an invasion were to take place we would be less able to repel it.

While American gun control activists may actually agree with the sentiment expressed via China’s state-run media, even they should at least question why China is so concerned about a domestic issue. They should be concerned that Chinese interest has less to do with concerns about American lives and more with destabilizing our nation or worse.

Unfortunately, too few are interested in doing anything but echoing Chinese media whenever convenient and never questioning why they care about this at all.