If that makes the gun an equalizer then our country, with some 200 million firearms, is democratic to a fault.
Guns enable children to qualify as grownups without aging.
Too young to vote, drink, or sign a contract, they may be tried as adults if they manage to shoot people, hardly a sign of maturity. At bedtime American grownups watch selected carnage on TV, the newsroom guideline being, If it bleeds, it leads. While the homicide rate has fallen 20 percent in this decade, news media coverage of murders has increased six-fold. First, we gain from a stranger s violent death even while deploring it. Second, as individuals and groups we must interpret the random, the bizarre, whatever threatens.