“We never will have a meaningful discussion about gun control so long as one side insists we are trying to ban all guns.” This was the latest Facebook meme floating around today. I wonder just what they mean by “meaningful” or “gun control”? The word “meaningful” usually is followed up with the words “common sense approach” or “reasonable”. Let’s all be “reasonable” and have a “meaningful” discussion about “gun control” and please let’s take “common sense” measures to let our government control our guns.

The language these days from those on the left of the political spectrum is so often manipulated or spun that one must put every piece of media minutiae heard through the filter of your own informed mind or risk being manipulated subconsciously. I mean who wouldn’t want meaningful gun control right? At least that’s the impression the writer of this meme wanted you to believe. What if however you don’t think “gun control” is a problem at all, at least not in the way the meme writer meant?

The people who argue for “gun control” are usually the same people who look for government to protect them from all things dangerous and deadly. Government is the answer and more common sense control is needed in their minds. To them the idea of someone actually using a gun to defend themselves and their property is just plain crazy. Why would someone want to risk losing their lives and hurting others when the police or the military can protect them? After the shootings in Aurora and Newtown one can hardly blame them. Fear is the great currency used by the politician and Statist to buy the public’s support for more control of their lives. We are convinced through the message brought to us by the media and some of our leaders that we must relinquish our individual freedoms in favor of a more secure world. It’s dangerous out there and reasonable common sense laws must be written that protect the citizens. That’s the argument. Do you buy it?

I don’t and neither should you. Don’t be fooled into thinking that making more “reasonable” or “common sense” laws will fix the problem, or that registering your weapons, or agreeing to bans on certain firearms will stop there and make us all safer. They haven’t in the past and won’t in the future. You only need look at Chicago or Washington, DC, two jurisdictions with the most restrictive gun control measures on the books, and know that more gun control isn’t the solution. The problem does not lie with guns but the people willing to use them on their fellow human beings. The agenda however for gun control has never been about reducing violence by guns, but instead about the second word of that two word phrase, control.

To those that love government and wholeheartedly support the nanny state, having Joe Sixpack running around with weapons similar in nature or even appearance used by the country’s military is unsettling. Never mind that Joe is a law abiding citizen with no criminal history or mental defects. Nothing poses a threat to a Statist more than a free thinking person who is capable of defending himself and his property and willing to stand up to his government and those willing to impose their will on him.

Americans ought not to be a fearful people. It’s not in our DNA. In the past when trouble came knocking we answered the door, usually armed with whatever we had with us, a shovel, a musket, hatchet, knife whatever, and we dealt with the problem. We did not wait for someone else to come and protect us, and in the old days help was far away from the trouble at hand. Even today most wait times for police to respond to a call are measured in minutes, sometimes much longer in more rural areas. Little comfort that is when seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

A meaningful discussion should start with why we need to have a government so powerful and controlling over every aspect of our lives. Why have we disregarded our laws and permitted the perversion of our values? Why do we keep killing each other and disregarding life so easily? Hard questions but more meaningful than half baked feel good legislative solutions like firearm magazine bans that pander to a panicked public and further strip away rights hard fought in blood and treasure by past generations of Americans.

I fear a government armed to the teeth and willing to lie, cheat and steal from me and stomp all over my rights to get its way far, far more than I fear my neighbor who happens to own a machine gun or a bazooka and so should you.