Gun advocates become what they warned against

What happens when you’ve become the thing you warned us about?

Second Amendment advocates have often said guns are necessary to prevent tyranny. And now some have become the tyranny — which is to say, “oppressive governmental power.”

What else can you call it, when thousands of “secret police” descend upon an American city, going door-to-door, seizing people and spreading terror? What else can you call it when a good Samaritan comes to the aid of a woman attacked by these government agents, and, after removing his holstered gun, they shoot him in the back?

What else can you call it when they claim the right to do so because he had a gun? If the “right to carry” becomes a reason to kill you, it isn’t much of a right, is it?

If the right to “peaceably assemble” becomes a reason to beat you and spray you with chemicals, it isn’t much of a right, is it? If the right of “due process” becomes a reason to quickly deport you, it isn’t much of a right, is it?

“Oppressive governmental power” indeed.

Several decades ago, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA warned of the day “jack-booted government thugs [with the] power to take away our constitutional rights, [might] break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.” It seemed far-fetched at the time.

Now we see LaPierre’s words come true. But, ironically, the thugs are his own people — those the NRA helped elect. They have become that which he feared. And the guns he thought would stop the tyranny? They have become an excuse for it.

Curt Johnson

Williamsburg