This essay covers the impact of the freedom to carry guns on American culture. It uses many examples from history, playing the Hitler card quite often. While most of the essay is thick in history and philosophy, my favorite part uses a fictional example:
I recently visited a website that featured a picture of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, with the caption: My hero! Someone who thinks his way out of trouble! The implication, of course, is that force and violence are universally to be rejected and despised as unworthy of thinking people (or Vulcans).
Well bucko, Spock carried a phaser as well as a tricorder, and he used it when he had to. If the Star Trek future represents a hope for our species at its most reasonable and open-minded best, it would be well to remember that the Enterprise carries a hell of a lot of photon torpedoes because the cause of human decency cannot be advanced if all the decent humans lie dead.
