GOP frontrunner Donald Trump appeared on Face the Nation Sunday and told “the Nation” that the best way to deal with the mass shootings we’ve been experiencing in recent days with ever-alarming frequency is for “the good guys” to arm themselves and be prepared to meet deadly force head on.
It’s a tittilating proposition for many today, as more and more innocent people die at the hands of the extremist and the mentally unhinged.
In states that allow it, gun-toting citizens carry sidearms openly, and it just may be– as Trump suggests– that criminals who see a group of people with weapons– in a store, a theater or a mall– would prefer not to take the risk of being shot themselves and go somewhere else to commit their crime.
But the image evoked by Trump is not new. More than a hundred years ago we called it the Wild, Wild West, and as soon as they could, the pioneers and settlers of that day and time found themselves some marshals and sheriffs to disarm everybody. In a word: been there, done that.
Maybe if we refocused our marshals and sheriffs on disarming people who illegally possess guns, they wouldn’t have as much time to be preoccupied with shooting down those who don’t. Then maybe we’d all be just a little bit safer, and “the West” wouldn’t be quite so wild.
Just sayin’.
