Bad people do bad things. Good people do bad things. All people do bad things, sometimes.
It’s always been so, since before recorded history. It’s in our nature to act with selfish disregard, to harm others, to commit violence.
We’re also social creatures. We crave community. So in behaving badly, we dent and bruise and break the bonds of community.
It’s the yin and yang of being human, our contradictory impulses toward togetherness and selfishness that tips into violence.
We try to shape our impulses with Golden Rules, commandments, laws, even social shaming. We humans still do bad things.
Will we ever change? Raise a hand if you think so.
Right. I thought not.
Yet Mike Johnson thinks so. The Louisiana Republican was elevated this week to speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Asked about guns after yet another mass shooting, he said:
“At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns.”
Oh, how we worship guns. They make our worst impulses more deadly. But, sure. Let’s change our worst impulses instead.
Hooey.
More on guns
Gospel of the Second Amendment
Have you read the Constitution?
