Roger Kimball quoted from
Another Headline You Won't See in The New York Times, or Toqueville, Gun Control, and The Price of Freedom:
I say that I was surprised at the size and the temperature of the comment on a brief piece that was critical of gun control. I shouldn’t have been. Doubtless gun owners, like everyone else, are motivated by many things. Ditto for those who would outlaw possession of guns. But behind the panoply of motivations there is, I suspect, this fundamental philosophical divide: On the one side are people who see that we live in a free society, understand that freedom is not free—that it can often be quite an expensive quality—and who understand further that preserve freedom requires that individuals stand up for themselves, physically as well as in other ways.
On the other side of the divide are people who see that we live in a free society, who may also understand that freedom is not free—they, too, might admit that it can often be quite an expensive quality—but who wish to cede important parts of that responsibility to the state. The former are likely to be small-government, low-tax supporters of the Second Amendment. The latter are likely to be big government, high-tax critics of the Second Amendment.
I oversimplify, of course, but I believe the distinction I’ve limned here is a real one and one, moreover, that is worth meditating on, not only with respect to the question of gun ownership but, more generally, with respect to what might be the biggest issue facing citizens in Western democratic countries: the increasing concentration of state power and its intrusion into the fabric of everyday life.
The guy like totally gets it, and he writes better than any of us chicken farmers.
