As of July 5, 126 people have died after being shot in the District of Columbia in 2023. That is quite a lot compared with recent years, and DC is far from alone facing this problem.

Often, these shootings have a pattern – grudges or drive-by shootings, all very sad. Often involving teens. But sometimes they are different. Over the past week, a Lyft driver (Afghan native who translated for the US for several, brought her with his wife and four young children). A visiting school teacher shot mid-morning on the Catholic U. campus. Unusual victims, both in safe areas of the city.

As we know, large numbers of people (gun owners for the most part) say the problem is not guns but people with guns. I know that sounds ridiculous to all but to those who believe it, but there we are.

These same people, who worship the founding fathers (except when they don’t), say that we are guaranteed the right to have our guns via the beloved Second Amendment.

But is there a flaw in their argument? Everyone agrees that we have too many killings. And if they are correct that the problem is not the guns, but the people behind the guns, doesn’t that make the Second Amendment, the amendment which matches up guns with people, the problem? (I know I am leaving out another important factor – our originalist Supreme Court, which is originalist only in a hypocritical sense – but that’s for another day.)

Which brings me to drugs. I would posit that if guns don’t kill people, neither do drugs. Put a drug on a table or even in a pocket and nobody dies. Just like a gun on a table. To endanger human life, in both situations, someone needs to pick the object up. It’s the user, stupid.

So why do those gun lovers, who believe any opposition to guns is inspired by the devil, don’t take the same position regarding drugs? Why don’t they say “bring on the drugs” and concentrate on keeping people away from them? After all, there is no Second Amendment for drugs.

The answer is simple. They realize people will attach themselves to drugs and do harm. But they are blind to the same fact about guns.

Two more things.

First, you can argue that guns tend to be more dangerous to the public than drugs. No one will OD me on drugs as I walk down the street. Most guns are used to shoot others. Most drugs are turned on oneself. (I understand there are suicides, and there is Bill Cosby. I am just playing the numbers.)

Second, why can’t the drugs be stopped? In part, it’s because drug dealers have guns. And what’s one of the big reasons that people with guns are dangerous? It’s because they are on,or they want, drugs.

Guns and drugs aren’t two separate problems, they are two sides of the same problem.

But there people across the political spectrum who want to legalize all drugs. They say that will end the market in illegal drugs and end some of the violence associated with illegal drugs.

Do we really want a country where both guns and drugs are protected by the law?