Could it be...

To anyone willing and able to think, the truth is axiomatic:

Guns are inanimate assemblies of metal - they cannot walk, they cannot talk, they CANNOT KILL.

So then, since a gun is value-neutral, it means that guns are bad only when in the hands of bad people and, following this, good when in the hands of good people. A better way to describe it may be to say ‘responsible’ people and ‘irresponsible’ people.

Now, we have in Philadelphia certain neighborhoods where gunfire is common and many lives are lost every year. Behind the rhetoric of gun control advocates you find that – when pressed – they will admit the vast majority of communities have no problems with gun-related violence. They almost always point to the inner cities as the reason for gun control. Thus, we find that the people in the inner cities are the problem, not guns. Why are they the problem? Because many of them are deeply irresponsible. The questions that dare not get asked are: “Why are so many people in our inner cities so irresponsible?” And, “What do we do to make our citizens more responsible?” The answer to these questions lies in the assumptions and designs of over seventy years of social policy and for those of the political class these questions are as unthinkable as a fundamentalist Christian asking: “But if the bible is wrong about the sun orbiting the earth – then what else is it wrong about?

Nevertheless, until these questions get asked by those who make and implement our social policies, we will not get a handle on our problems.

In the meantime, while we waste our energies trying to put a band-aid on the cancer in our cities, people die.