Where Does Evil Reside?

Charles Gregory

Charles Gregory is a fella who believes something interesting: "Evil resides in the heart of the individual, not in material objects."

Gregory is a newly elected state representative in Georgia who has proposed a number of changes to Georgia law that would remove restrictions on guns.

What's more troubling than any of this is that people like Voxx Ford in this article, a writer at the Atlantic, think that Gregory's statement above is wrong.

Now he doesn't come out directly and say this is wrong - but he spends a good part of the article lambasting Gregory for what amounts to this belief.

He implies Gregory is a gun-loving kook for believing this.

At the end article Voxx calls for "crippling guns" to prevent further violence.

Interesting.

The implication is that guns are somehow like Sauron's ring in "The Lord of the Rings."

Evil materials that have been somehow magically infused with power by an evil being.

Gregory, on the other hand, sees guns as "material objects."

Now, scientifically speaking it seems pretty clear that there are not a lot of magical elements in the world today like Sauron's ring.

I am unaware of any type of inanimate object doing anything on its own.

(Of course there are things that really have no purpose but evil, e.g., sarin nerve gas, but they are few.  Even atomic weapons, as Bruce Willis will tell you, can be used to deflect asteroids that would otherwise smash into earth and destroy it.)

But even sarin gas, last used to my knowledge in Tokyo, Japan, required Shoko Asahara to actually organize and carry out the attack.  In the case of Asahara I suppose Voxx Ford could argue that the "sarin made him do it" or, perhaps the religion he developed, Aum Shinrikyo, or even the bible made this all possible.

But that only works if you believe we live in Middle Earth as I suppose Voxx Ford must.

War, killing, in-human treatment, and so on have been around since the dawn of human history.

Alexander the Great, for example, had no guns what-so-ever but still managed to conquer much of his known world.

I know that I don't live in Middle Earth and it seems that policies based on the fantasy that we do live there, where things like Sauron's ring have power in and of themselves, is simply nonsense.

Other claim guns have "no purpose" than to kill people.

Guns were invented primarily for killing of all sorts - game and people.

My guess is that in the early history of this country we survived only because we could hunt with guns.

Even countries like the UK exempt things like hunting rifles from "gun bans" because they have another, actual purpose.

I think that the fantasy here is believing in nonsense and not fact.

People kill other people and have since the dawn of humanity.

With rocks, sticks, guns, atomic weapons, airplanes, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is a human one, not one with "material objects."