I was away from the internet for the weekend, so I missed much of the early reporting of Hamas and Israel. I knew something happened and it looked ugly, but I had no idea how bad it really was.
Then I got home, logged onto my computer, and saw how bad it was.
As awful as that is, though, that’s over there. It’s not here, so that distance provides some comfort.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people marching in the United States who approve of not just Hamas but their brutality as well.
And as the Washington Examiner’s Zachary Faria argues, that should end the Second Amendment debate.
The Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians that has left over 900 people dead will have many knock-on effects. One of them should be the end of the gun control debate in the United States.
Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett was one of the first to observe this, and he is exactly right. Israeli civilians were vulnerable and unable to protect themselves from the coordinated Hamas attack that saw terrorists rape, kidnap, and murder hundreds who had no means of defending themselves. Entire towns were decimated before armed Israeli forces could jump into the action.
“That would never happen here,” you may say to yourself. It is often difficult to fathom that level of evil. Even Israel wasn’t prepared for it, and it has been under direct threat from Palestinian terrorists and other enemies since its formation. But consider some bleak realities we are seeing play out right now.
For example, look at our porous southern border.
Even if you accept that the majority of those crossing the border are really just looking for a better life, you have to acknowledge that the federal government’s either inability or unwillingness–or both–to secure the border opens up the opportunity for bad actors to try and use that to their advantage.
Faria notes that 151 people on the terror watch list were caught trying to cross into the United States in fiscal year 2023, more than the previous six years combined.
Does anyone really think we caught all of them?
Then we have the fact that actual Americans are celebrating the mass slaughter of people they don’t like. They’re happy about it, believing it to be an act of social justice.
The BLM chapter in Chicago just posted this in support of Hamas. pic.twitter.com/oLA1MwzoVO
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 10, 2023
Now, let’s understand a little something here. While those folks aren’t the majority of anything, there are still millions of people who think that this is perfectly acceptable. They think Hamas terrorists are role models.
Maybe it’s just me, but knowing how many people in this nation literally want me dead for the sin of disagreeing with them and who sided with the bunch that murders non-combatants, including babies, indiscriminately makes it so I’m not really interested in giving up my AR-15 or my 30-round magazines.
It’s not that it’s likely to happen.
No one is trying to say that it is.
But that’s also not the point, either. The likelihood of anything happening where I’d need it is slim. It’s about what happens if the odds are against us and it does and we’re not able to defend ourselves.
Israel changed its policies to some degree, all in an effort to put more guns in civilian hands, because it did happen and there weren’t enough in place.
Gun control is a non-starter now for a lot of us. No, Hamas isn’t likely to pour over the border and start massacring innocent people, but Hamas isn’t the only group of bad guys who don’t like the United States or its people.
This should end the gun debate once and for all.
Unfortunately, it won’t.
