A conversation about freedom

I know, I should be using this time to write on book four, but I had an interesting conversation with a bartender last night. He wasn’t just any bartender, he had been a bartender at the Officers Club at a major DOD base for the last 40 years. The club was fairly empty, as are most military bars these days, but that’s a different conversation.

The subject of mass shootings came up. Our bartender made a very strong comment that he believed in the second amendment, but that no one needed an AR or AK. My colleagues immediately gave me some room as they all know that this is one of my buttons.

I gave our friendly bartender all the time he needed to state his case about these vile articles of death. Then I ask him if he had ever had the desire to pick up a gun and just go shoot a bunch of innocent strangers. He stated of course not. I then asked him why not and of course he replied that only someone crazy would do that. So I followed that up with asking him if owning an AK or AR would change his mind about that. His answer was No of course not.

I next ask him if he thought cars should be limited to less than 100 horsepower. He looked at me like I was growing horns and said no, if someone could afford to have a nice car then he didn’t have a problem with that. I asked him why does anyone need a car or motorcycle that could run a 130 mph.

As our conversation continued, I could see the light coming on and without any prompting he admitted he had never really thought the issue of AKs and ARs all the way through. The bottom line is good people don’t go out and commit crimes like mass shootings.

We see every day someone committing a horrible crime, mostly against the weak and defenseless. Our police are vilified and are more at risk from the people they are attempting to protect and are sworn to protect. They are more than likely to get sued or prosecuted than the criminals committing crimes. I’m afraid it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.

Let me know what you think. John Stuart Mill said it best, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”