A bedtime story: Guns and the country that loved them

There once was a great, and greatly confused, country whose citizens held one thing in higher regard than all others, including their own lives. They were a proud and passionate bunch buoyed by rights granted to them long ago and since protected by acts of valor and bravery no one could dispute.

While the people clearly loved these rights, as they should have, they were willing to relinquish them all – worshiping freely, peaceably assembling, enjoying liberty and life itself – to prove that their freedom and their very existence were secured by one preeminent principle. It was a singular emancipating dictum that did not discriminate by color, creed, political belief or background, a grand equalizer capable of doling out punishment like the very courts established to protect them.

To wit, these wise and noble people would ensure that everyone – churchgoers and teenagers, movie watchers and moms, elderly folks and elementary school kids – knew they were free. Free to always be permanently maimed. Free always to be killed. Free to spend every waking second knowing they, and everyone around them, were never out of reach of the preeminent principle. Free to never be free.

It was a bargain for them, really. As long as no one took away the one thing they held most dear – a cheap and readily available piece of steel – anyone was free to take away everything else. And this happened regularly. Every 17 minutes someone in the great country reminded a family and a community that one fundamental freedom superseded the rest. Those who didn’t die during these frequent reminders of freedom were left to quarrel painfully and perpetually over their motivation and intent. Planned or random? Hate or terror? Racism or sexism? Soldier or civilian? Video games or music? Mentally ill or able minded? Yet there was only one unifying answer, a single word to collectively explain each reminder of freedom: armed.

You see, for decades, while the advanced nations of the world abandoned their false sense of security for actual improved safety, this obstinate and fiercely self-reliant country refused to leave behind its preeminent principle. As innocent blood spilled through their cities and towns, they stayed the course, determined to demonstrate that the only cure was more of what ailed them. If everyone would exercise their right, they said, no matter the setting or circumstance, then one-and-all would know liberty and enlightenment.

Like fixated children gorging on candy for the first time, unconcerned by the impending stomach ache, the citizens listened, stockpiling their arsenal – legally and illegally – so that soon they were outnumbered by their own personal killing machines. Their worship of this manufactured pestilence masquerading as protection, peddled and politically preserved for profit, would ultimately define and dismantle them. Too wary of their government and too scared of each other, the historically resilient people, distinguished for overcoming so many obstacles in their past, were unwilling to once again tackle what seemed impossible: ridding themselves of the obsession that kept them from true freedom.

They preposterously pushed onward as if the solution to their problem were exactly the same as the problem itself. One more school. One more house. One more street. One more church.

When the people were gone, they left behind a beautiful land littered with shiny metal objects, the ones they bought, sold, imported and stole until the very end. They loved their guns more than anything. Even themselves.

This story was originally published June 25, 2015 at 5:45 PM with the headline "A bedtime story: Guns and the country that loved them."