what do you fear?

Caleb recently touched on something that I want to take a moment and expound upon. A common thread amongst anti-rights bigots these days is that “average Americans” (namely, the bigots themselves) do not “trust” us with firearms, and because they do not trust us, they believe our rights should be abridged, our privacy should be invaded, our access to firearms should be restricted/limited/taxed, and certain people’s firearms should simply be taken away (despite those people not necessarily ever having committed a crime). As Caleb notes, it all comes down to irrational, illogical, emotional fear.

Now, given that fear is an emotional response, we cannot rationally expect people to simply shuck it off like a set of clothes. What we can do, however, is expose the full extent of that emotion’s control over their rational mind, and hope that they take whatever personal steps are necessary to quell or quiet the fear, in favor of calm, logical thought. It might take time, it might take work, but overcoming one’s fears (be it of firearms or felines) is generally well worth the effort.

So, in order to shed a little reason on the situation, I have a series of simple questions to ask of those people who do not trust law-abiding American citizens with firearms.

Do you trust those citizens with gasoline?

Do you trust those citizens with fertilizers?

Do you trust those citizens with propane or natural gas?

Do you trust those citizens with welding equipment?

Do you trust those citizens with bottled oxygen?

Do you trust those citizens with flour?

Why am I asking those questions? Because each and everyone one of those common household or industrial substances has the capacity to kill far more people than a firearm, in a much shorter time.

Taking it from a the top, only two people were injured in this particular explosion, but that is a poor indicator of the scope of the destruction:

The 12:30 a.m. blast was the equivalent of a 2.8 magnitude earthquake, according to the Puerto Rico Seismic Network.

Yes, this took place at a refinery, but all one needs is a five gallon tank of gasoline and a way of aerosolizing it (not exactly difficult), and you have a poor-man’s FAE.

Fertilizer bombs hardly need an introduction.

Propane bottles are naturally-occuring hybrid rocket-bombs, depending on how you use them, and how they decide to explode, and full-on BLEVEs are nightmarish. Granted, few deaths occur from such explosions, but that is often because propane-handling facilities are isolated, and because no one really intentionally tries to blow up their grill (though thousands of people still manage to do so).

Moving on, do I really need to explain how mixing C2H2 (acetylene) with pure O2 and an ignition source can lead to disastrous explosions if not properly regulated?

And speaking of pure oxygen, strictly speaking, it is simply an oxidizer (duh) and cannot technically explode on its own. However, in the presence of other combustibles, the results can be… impressive. Likewise, bottled oxygen is typically under substantial pressure (tremendous pressure, if the O2 is liquified), making its tank a natural high-speed projectile (do not view the slideshow unless you can handle blood).

So what is up with flour? We bake with it. We cook with it. We make messes with it (or maybe just I do). But is it really something to worry about people handling? Well, ask those 18 people who died at the Washburn ‘A’ Mill in 1878. The explosion was entirely accidental, but reproducing its effects on almost any scale is as easy as going to your local supermarket and securing a pound of flour and a packet of matches (taking the appropriate safety precautions is highly recommended, I am not liable for your own stupidity, etc. etc.).
As I said in a few of the examples above, with the exception of fertilizer, very few deaths (in the grand scheme of things) have resulted from explosions involving the substances I mentioned… but very few examples of malicious bombs using those substances (again, with the exception of fertilizer) are available. This is not because these substances are ineffective as weapons – a propane tank ignited in my local mall would result in more than a few deaths, I feel certain – but simply because their use requires a little imagination, a little finesse, and seeing past their “common” uses.

So I have to ask those people who do not “trust” me and my fellow law-abiding American citizens with firearms: do you trust me to drive around with a bottle of propane in my trunk? Do you trust elderly citizens with their little oxygen tank carts? Do you trust me to use my fertilizer to green my garden and not something else? Do you trust me to only make the kind of “flour bombs” that are annoying to wash out of your clothes?

So why is there the disconnect with firearms? Given the plethora of uses firearms have apart from illegal murder, why should their treatment be any different than any other potentially-destructive inanimate object or material? Why should you allow one destructive object to force you to live a life of fear when you are so comfortable with hundreds, if not thousands, of others?

If you want to continue living your life in fear, then that is certainly your choice, and you are welcome to it… but I honestly believe you will be better off with fewer things to keep you up at night, and these days, there are no shortage of people willing to help you out.