Giving inanimate objects free will

I don’t think some people believe me when I tell them the hoplophobes frequently appear to believe that guns have free will. Here is more evidence of the truth of my claim:

No one will rise up to defend a man who walks into an Amish school, lines young girls up against a blackboard, ties up their feet, and then kills them before killing himself. But a surprising number of people will inevitably rise up to defend his guns, to call the man guilty but his weapons innocent.

There are no simple solutions to this conflict. It is neither possible nor tolerable to secure every school or guard every child. Nor is it possible or politically tolerable to keep tabs on every gun. But in these killings we see an open society threatened by the ubiquity of its weapons, in which one kind of freedom is allowed to trump all others. Most gun owners are respectable, law-abiding citizens. But that is no reason to acquit the guns.

Call the weapons innocent? “Acquit the guns”? Someone should commit these lunatics. They have mental problems.

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One thought on “Giving inanimate objects free will

  1. Evil spirits.

    The guns are possessed with evil spirits, no doubt through some super secret ritual performed by fundamentalist Christian, NRA members who regularly visit gun shops.

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