There is only one way that the story can end.

One of our frequent activities when visiting my folks in Vegas was to get to a gun range. And while we enjoyed many of the private ones in the area, our favorite was the Clark County Shooting Complex. We found the staff there very professional, super safety-conscious, and very patient with people, as Rambo described himself, who have fired a few shots. Every trip involved at least one visit to the shooting range. My kids were shocked when they saw rifles at Walmart and when we did our bullet shopping there when ammo was cheaper than at the gun range.

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People should use their constitutional right to own guns and ammo. They should be proficient in the use of their guns, and they should obviously take great care to keep all weapons safely stored. Why should Americans get more guns if they already have nearly 400 million today? Because there is only one way that this story is going to end.

Oftentimes we can see a disaster a mile off. You have a friend with a very abusive boyfriend. They don’t break up immediately, but when your friend says that they parted ways after six months, it is no great surprise to you. Sometimes we see a guy driving like a lunatic and are not shocked to see his vehicle doing an accordion impression somewhere further down the interstate. Every form of government includes the seeds of its own destruction. The same is true for dictatorships and democracies. We have witnessed in our lifetimes the end of the USSR and the fall of strongmen like Saddam and Assad. Repression and violence against citizens may work for many long years, but the resentment grows, and at some point, a dictator might either find the end of a noose or a one-way ticket out of his country. The same problem exists with Western democracies.

One has to always recall that Adolf Hitler came to power through elections. He was tasked by Germany’s president to form a government after his Nazi Party had the strongest showing in the 1933 vote. Once he took power, he ended all other parties and became the de facto dictator of Germany and later much of Europe. It took a horrific war and tens of millions dead before Hitler killed himself in his bunker. Germany and the world were devastated but better off with his end.