Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Is gun control essentially un-American?

I’ve been reading a lot of early American history lately.

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I’ve been reading a lot of early American history lately. The more I read, the more I think that the gun is central to our history. So yes, controlling guns is literally “un-American,” in that it runs against the grain of our past.

Even so, I think we need to do something about guns, especially in the hands of the insane. Part of the problem is that everyone is partly nuts sometime. And some people are bigtime nuts much of the time. Other countries have crazy people too, but they don’t make it so easy for them to get weapons in their crazed hands.

Photo credit: M&R Glasgow via Flickr

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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