Blaming the Gun, Not the Shooter — Especially if He's a Cop

by William Norman Grigg

Proponents of civilian disarmament will often describe a gun as an entity possessing an independent will and a capacity for malice –as in the phrase, “Guns kill children,” as opposed to “Guns can be used to kill — or to save — children.” People of that persuasion do not seek the abolition of firearms, but rather the creation of a state monopoly on firearms ownership, which means that they must consider firearms in the hands of armed state agents as mystically immune to their otherwise irrepressibly murderous impulses.

Alas, guns aren’t reliably benign even in the consecrated hands of the state’s duly commissioned agents of officially sanctioned violence. 

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