My husband runs a Facebook group for owners of a particular model of Harley Davidson motorcycle. He is a kiwi, who has lived in Australia since we met a little under seven years ago. The vast majority of the group’s members are American, the flags flying from the back of their bikes gives them away.
Recently he posted something along the lines of how free he felt living in such a lucky country, given the atrocities happening in Ukraine.
This response stumped me.
How can you call yourself free, you can’t even buy a gun in your country to defend your family and property!
I was stumped. Since when does the right to own an object designed to maim and kill equate to freedom?
…
Today we watch on in horror from the other side of the world as yet another tragedy unfolds. Children are dead, again.
Another school shooting in America, the land of the free. Something like this is practically unheard of in ‘unfree’ Australia.
So I ask those who bang on about their constitutionally enshrined gun rights, and their supposed freedom, can you just admit the truth?
The truth is, by defending your constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms, you are saying that the cost, the lives of your fellow Americans, including those who have barely had a chance to start theirs, is an acceptable price to pay to protect your freedom.
There’s no way around it. You can send all the thoughts and prayers you like, but if you defend the second amendment, you are saying the price is worth it.
I’m so grateful that I don’t live in America.
So grateful that I’m not free.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Heather Mount on Unsplash
I’m so grateful I live in America where we have the right to defend ourselves with effective tools i.e. guns. the price of not owning guns is slavery and I would rather live free then die a slave! it is pure fantasy to believe that by banning guns you will become safe! criminals with kill with what ever they can get their hands on, and governments will not give up their guns! just ask the German Jew under Hitler. the Russian’s under Stalin, the Cambodians under Pol Pot, Freedom has to be earned and protected and guns give us that… Read more »
You can not trust the Government to protect you, nor should you this is America, land of the free, our forefathers wanted us to protect ourselves which is why they said it is the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, no law will ever prevent criminals or psychopaths from killing, even in Norway where guns are banned this was proven true, when a mass shooter killed 77 men women and children on Utoya island. Norway, it was because Norway denied and denies their people the right to keep and bear arms that so… Read more »