Hijacking the language


Latest thing from the gun control crowd is to refer to their objective as "gun safety." Of course that is nonsense. Gun safety is what you do with a gun if you have one, to make sure the wrong people don't get their hands on it, and that you use it safely, so that holes end up only in the proper types of targets. If the idea is to keep people from having guns, that is properly termed "gun control."

I have been advocating for better gun safety for many years (along with a great many other people) and the influence on the accident rate is significant and downward. It has nothing to do with saying you cannot have this gun, or that magazine, or that your name belongs in another government database.

The term "gun safety" has been hijacked because it sounds good. Who could be against safety? But the word does not mean the same thing when it is spoken to deceive. Of course it does not: No word does.

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