What if the crazies are right?

I have read many hundreds of comments that the pro-gun folks are posting online. I have listened to them speak in public and talked with them in private. I have read the emails they have been sending to me. I am starting to wonder, what if they are right?

What if more people having more guns really would lead to less crime? What if everyone was so prepared to unleash lethal violence that would-be criminals would be intimidated into not committing crimes? Would this be a country that anyone would want to live in, or would people flee the oppressive threat of violence and live as refugees in other countries?

What if our government really is poised to send jack-booted stormtroopers to grab the guns away from patriots and replace democracy with a totalitarian communist fascist socialism, whatever that is? What if the Jews really do run the world through secret international banking cabals? What if our president really is getting ready to execute a secret plan and turn our country over the the United Nations?

What if the crazies are right, and the rest of us are deluded dupes being led to the slaughter like sheep? What if it really is pointless to enact laws because bad guys don't always obey them? What if we all had the obligation and the God-given, inalienable right to defend ourselves with no limits on the amount of deadly force we could use, regardless of how many innocent bystanders we maim and kill?

What if all the thousands of newspaper reporters and columnists, and the TV and radio reporters and commentators are really conspiring to hide the truth from us? What if no children were shot at Sandy Hook, Obama wasn't born in the U.S., the federal income tax is unconstitutional, and each state is free to do whatever it wants because this is a Republic? What if the Constitution can't be interpreted in the context of modern experience but must be read according to some right-wing zealot's view of what it meant at a time when Africans were slaves, Native peoples were considered less than human, and women were property in America?

What if everyone who disagrees with the loonies is a traitor to our country who should be beaten senseless? What if the John Birch Society is right and fluoridated water really is weakening our minds and vaccinations against childhood diseases really are destroying our bodies? What if psychiatric drugs are to blame for all the school shootings? What if AIDs was invented by the government, gays really are polluting the gene pool, Mexicans really have taken all the good vegetable harvesting jobs, affirmative action is making our country effeminate, and aliens from outer space are among us? And what about the zombies?

What if evolution is an unproven notion that threatens the existence of God, climate change is just a theory, and cigarettes don't cause cancer? What if unions destroy jobs and hippies don't take baths? What if every soldier is a hero and it really doesn't matter how many Afghan, Iraqi, and Vietnamese civilians we've killed? What if Iran really is getting ready to launch nuclear warheads they don't have on missiles they don't have? What if Muslims really are trying to destroy everything America stands for, regardless of what it says in the Koran?

Maybe the crazies are right. Or maybe they're just crazy.