Jun 18, 2016 2 min read

Speaking out against radical Islamists is less of a recruitment tool than appeasement is.

The national conversation has once again been directed toward more gun control in the wake of the carnage in Orlando, Fla., last Sunday. but blaming an inanimate object is misdirection. It’s a dodge.

It was not a gun that savagely killed all those innocents in that nightclub. It was hatred. Hatred of our freedom. The freedom to choose any religion or even no religion, or the freedom to be gay, straight or somewhere in between.

If it wasn’t a gun it could have been pressure cooker bombs, like those used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack, or any number of other ways to kill.

Freedom is not perfect, especially when a free country’s people become less moral. Benjamin Franklin lamented, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” But ultimate power in the hands of government will ultimately be turned against its people. Think of Mao, Hitler, Stalin or the Khmer Rouge. Islamists dream of a world governed in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Freedom is a roadblock to that end. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written to protect our freedoms from an overbearing government.

Attacking guns is like prescribing voodoo magic. It might feel good and it might sound good if you buy into it, but would do little to address the root cause while playing into the hands of our enemies by chipping away at the very freedoms they so detest.

Ed McCauley

Peters