Talismans

In every conversation that revolves around firearms, particularly with the anti-gun left, the subject always comes around to "if  guns didn't exist, there'd be no more murder" or some close facsimile thereof.

In their minds, the gun is the cause of the crime.  Whether it's an armed robbery, a domestic dispute, or flat out murder; it's always the gun's fault.  The person behind the gun, with evil intent in their heart and on their brain, is completely blameless.

For such a supposedly enlightened bunch, they sure do fixate on the inanimate object first and completely forget about the intent of the person holding it.

Think of it this way.  Millennia ago, our ancestors thought certain objects were imbued with magical powers that could ward off, or attract, all kinds of mythical things.  Rocks, statues, trees,  hills, medallions, and even people were thought to be possessed of these 'powers'.  Though I must give them credit, they aren't the first to think a weapon could imbue power on it's wielder.  Excalibur comes to mind.

To the rest of us, these objects are just that.  Objects.  That possess no power whatsoever.  They may look pretty or may appear scary, but at the end of the day they are still just rocks, statues, trees, hills, medallions, swords, and even guns.

I saw this same mindset 20 yrs ago when I was ordered to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as part of punishment for an incident I was involved in regarding a drunk SOB who thought my Stetson hat would look better on the floor than on my head.  I heard a bunch of supposedly intelligent people blaming all the ills in their lives on an inanimate bottle of liquor.  The 'Bottle' made me do it, they'd exclaim.  It made me get drunk and get into a fight, or sleep around on my wife, or beat my kids, or drive drunk, I heard around the room.  It was the bottle's fault they were in the mess they were in, not theirs.

Yet these are the same people who will scream about science, and against religion because there can't be any such thing as an all-knowing mythical Old Man in the sky.  Will absolutely rant and rave against religion and spirituality, yet see no hypocrisy in telling everyone that an inanimate object has the power to overtake the free will of the average human being and make them commit murder.

Am I the only one who sees this?