The middle of May brings a flood of graduation pictures to social media. It’s an appropriate time for high school and college graduates to reflect, enjoy the summer, and then dive into new opportunities come fall.
Recently, it’s become quite the trend for conservative college students to pose with their firearms in their graduation photo shoots – and I’m not just talking about firearms, but the “big, scary” weapons that liberals call “assault weapons.”
Now that I graduated from @KentState, I can finally arm myself on campus. I should have been able to do so as a student- especially since 4 unarmed students were shot and killed by the government on this campus. #CampusCarryNow pic.twitter.com/a91fQH44cq
— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) May 13, 2018
I don’t take normal college graduation photos… pic.twitter.com/eI1NvLFYHs
— Brenna Spencer (@BrennaSpencer) April 7, 2018
In the last few years, specifically since children as young as 6 years-old were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, there’s been a massive push by a vocal left-wing contingent to say “Never again!” Yet it continues to happen, mainly because those voices conflate all responsible gun owners together under a massive skull-and-crossbones pirate flag of the “evil” NRA and the Second Amendment they say was written only for muskets and cannons. Cooler heads usually prevail.
Because the Piers Morgans and Everytowns of the political world have successfully lobbied influential politicians to go as far as to whip up a good ol’ fashioned sit-in – after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016 – they’ve also frightened a large portion of America into believing we’re a few votes away from a nationwide gun-grab. As such, NRA donations have poured in. However, there’s one section of the Right that isn’t painting gun owners in the best light: the gun graduation photo takers.
These young ladies — using their firearms as a prop, bragging about them in their graduation pictures — do nothing but damage the brand of the responsible gun owner.
A responsible gun owner prays every day that they will never have to use their gun, that it’s only there for protection should, God forbid, they ever need it. Of course, there are absolute gun-enthusiasts who are proud of their collections, but for the sake of argument, the average permitted gun owner probably won’t even tell you that they carry. I’ve never known a gun owner to go waving around his pistol in broad daylight like Billy The Kid. If you saw someone do that, you’d probably call the police.
If we are to own the firearm safety conversation, and own it, not just rely on NRA donations after every mass shooting, then we have to treat guns as guns. Not as toys, not as soft-core porn props, but weapons, used only for self-defense and sport.
Ben Shapiro made the argument – through the whole Milo Yiannopoulos fad – that the way to fight back against political correctness was not to go throwing out every vile thought that comes through your head. It emboldens the speech police that in fact we do not take our words seriously, and perhaps some “changes” ought to be made. In the same way, Second Amendment advocates obviously don’t want their right – that the founding fathers plowed into American soil – to bear arms to ever be infringed. Perhaps we should respect its use.
I’m not fully on board with George Carlin’s proclamation that Americans have special privileges, not rights, but let’s remember that we’re so fortunate to live in a nation that made sure the one amendment that protected all the rest was locked in. Let’s treat our weapons as we treat our words — with extreme prudence and good judgment.
