By Timothy Wheeler, MD
When most of us think of America’s enemies today, at least those of us who don’t fret about dehumanizing “the other” by even using that word, we think of ISIS or other Islamic terrorists. It apparently takes a very smart person—an eminent professor trained at the best universities—to show us how far off track our thinking is. Here’s the inside scoop from UCLA professor Jared Diamond:
“Already, plenty of Americans are asserting the right to carry guns in previously unlikely places (such as in schools and government offices). Already, they are forming private militias for purposes such as patrolling the Mexican border and protecting a claimed right to graze cattle on federal lands. Again, when private citizen militias already carry guns for those purposes, it’s ‘just’ a matter of expanding the scope of an established principle to use guns for other purposes.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I spent more years as a student after high school (undergraduate, grad school, medical school, internship, and residency) than Diamond, so I’m not some anti-intellectual troglodyte. But just how cloistered behind those ivy-covered walls must you be to be afraid of American gun owners? Perhaps Prof. Diamond’s friends should take him for a walk outside L.A.’s west side so he can celebrate the diversity of all Americans.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.