The National Rifle Association recently posted a video entitled “Everyone Gets A Gun” featuring hired commentator Billy Johnson, in which Johnson discusses the idea of introducing guns as part of public school curriculums and government subsidizing guns for citizens.
Johnson bases his argument on the fact that the federal government subsidizes education, welfare, health care, and retirement. Referring to those programs, Johnson insisted that the government should subsidize guns and ammunition for all Americans. There’s one problem with this argument, however. People need education, food, health care, and retirement stipends. People don’t need guns.
Realizing that the federal government doesn’t see guns as a necessity, Johnson believes that the federal government should. He said that if government operated under the assumption that Americans need guns, then maybe the government will provide guns, with free ammo and all.
Johnson takes the argument a step further, surpassing ridiculous and venturing into completely insane: gun skills should be instituted in education curriculums for children. If the kids don’t progress in their gun knowledge and marksmanship, then they don’t pass on to the next grade. As Johnson muses on the current educational system, “the danger in educating people to think is that they might actually start to think for themselves.”
“It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t want to learn,” said Johnson. “We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.”
Johnson does get one thing correct. Policies concerning education, retirement, and welfare are meant to protect access, as he notes. He also said that gun policies are generally designed to limit who has access to guns, which is the correct move (although the gun restrictions are very flimsy).
The bottomline here is that guns are not a necessity and the NRA and the federal government would have a difficult time trying to persuade the American public that it needs guns. And as for adding gun skills to education, in what situation would being able to fire and fieldstrip an AK-47 prove useful on a college application?
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.